Legacies
by jazzpha
Summary: The Jedi Civil War is over. Revan thought he would be able to put his past as a Sith behind him for good, but he’s soon to discover that the dark powers he set in motion will not be so easily forgotten.
1. Guilt

**Legacies**

**Chapter 1:** Guilt

* * *

The cloaked figure sat out on one of the Dantooine Enclave's open patios and faced the rising sun, his hood protecting him from the light as it finally crested the horizon and continued to climb upwards into the sky. The figure sighed and smiled, lowering the hood to allow the gentle breeze to blow by his face.

There was a stillness in the air, unique to the morning, that Revan found incredibly calming; before all of the padawans awoke and began their training, exercises and various classes for the day, the flow of the Force was much clearer and undisturbed. It was in this tranquility that Revan felt completely at peace, and could lay aside his burdens for a few brief hours. He could simply let himself flow along with the Force, allowing it to speak to him in whatever way it willed. Closing his eyes, the Jedi extended himself outward, into the waiting arms of the Force.

But this time, the Force was waiting for him with something in mind, and presented Revan with something he hadn't experienced since the quest for the Star Forge several months previous:

A vision.

"_You asked for me, Lord Revan?"_

_The speaker was a Trandoshan, cloaked in black with his hood up, covering everything from sight save his brightly rust-orange reptilian eyes._

"_Yes, Blademaster Arnok," a man Revan recognized as himself replied emotionlessly, the yellow eyes and black robe marking him as the Dark Lord of the Sith. "I did. I hear your consort has given birth to a child. Is this true?"_

_The Trandoshan nodded at once._

"_Indeed, my Lord Revan," Arnok replied. "It is a boy; I have christened him Jerissk. The Force is strong within him; I believe he has the potential to surpass even me in the art of the lightsaber."_

"_Then you will ensure that such an outcome is brought to fruition, Blademaster," the Dark Lord Revan replied, "no matter what the cost. The first thing he grasps will be a lightsaber. The first words he speaks will be the Seven Forms of Comabt. If he seeks your position by rite of combat some day, you will fight him for it without hesitation. If you strike him down, he was unworthy of a place in our Order. If he strikes you down, I will take it upon myself to finish his training. Is this understood?"_

_The Trandoshan bowed once, completely accepting of his fate as one of the Dark Lord Revan's most valuable soldiers and teachers._

"_Of course, my Lord," Arnok answered. "In the name of the Sith Empire- in the name of Revan- it will be so."_

The vision ended as abruptly as it had come, thrusting Revan sharply back to the present. It had been so vivid that it took the Jedi several moments before he was convinced he was on Dantooine instead of Korriban; he even went as far as to walk over to a small current of running water and glance down into it, relieved to find blue eyes staring back at him, rather than bright yellow ones.

Quickly wiping away beads of sweat that had begun to form on his brow, Revan took in a few calming breaths before he realized it would take much more than that to calm his troubled mind. His days as the Dark Lord were none he cared to revisit ever again, and yet the Force had seen it as important for him to view that conversation. But why? What had it hoped for him to draw from such a short exchange?

Truth be told, Revan hadn't even seen Arnok again after that meeting; he and Malak had gone off to oversee the Star Forge shortly afterward, and the Transoshan Blademaster had been nowhere in sight during the slaughter that Revan and his comrades had committed at the Academy during their journey, when it had been under the stewardship of one Uthar Wynn.

Shaking his head to clear it of the last vestiges of the vision, the Jedi began to walk. He had no destination in mind, and didn't particularly want one; he was just going to walk until the vision of his former self had been left far enough behind him to fade away. Malak was dead, and Revan himself had firmly renounced the Dark Side—the redeemed Jedi assumed the Force understood that meant it could leave him in peace.

But apparently the Force had some convoluted plan of its own, and was not to be dissuaded.

"What more do you want from me?" he whispered to the winds, seeking an answer that did not come. The Force had retreated from his mind, its message delivered and clearly in no mood to reveal anything else.

_Fall to the Dark Side one time,_ he thought to himself wearily, _and they never let you live it down._

"Master Revan! Master Revan!"

The excited voice of a youngling was enough to pull the Jedi from his thoughts, and Revan turned to face the boy that rushed up to meet him, before doubling over, winded, to catch his breath.

"Easy, kid; easy," the Jedi said as the learner got his balance back. A pair of determined brown eyes were soon looking up at Revan, without the shadow of intimidation that the Jedi thought was all-too frequent among the younglings that interacted with him on a daily basis. Revan finally recognized the boy as Westor Astare, one of Revan's History students.

"What's wrong, that's got you running to find me in such a hurry?"

"What do you think, Master?" the child countered, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Our class started five minutes ago!"

"It did?" Revan asked, as confused as his student. Clearly, he'd been out thanks to that vision for longer than he'd thought. Westor nodded adamantly, and Revan hid his jarred state of mind behind a mask built up from decades of emotional control.

_There is no emotion; there is peace._

Why the Force didn't seem to want to follow through on its end of the bargain, though, Revan had no idea.

"All right, then," he said, walking back into the Enclave as his student fell into line behind him, "let's go."

* * *

The classroom was quieter than it had been in weeks when Revan entered it, walking quickly to the front of the room and looking over the faces of his students. The Academy here at the Enclave had grown exponentially since the death of Malak and the fracturing of the Sith, with several parents who had been afraid to expose their Force-sensitive children to the public during the Jedi Civil War coming out of the woodwork now that there was no danger of their children turning into soldiers.

Master Lamar had been firmly against Revan's position as a teacher in any way, shape or form, and Revan had been as well, but it was at Master Dorak's insistence that the newly-ordained Jedi Master took up the position. He was practically a history lesson incarnate, and fit in perfectly with Dorak's philosophy that those who did not internalize and remember their history were doomed to repeat it. Revan's class had students that ranged from younglings to padawans to a few Knights who audited it regularly, all of them as eager to claim the status of having been in the same room as a living legend as they were to learn. Revan openly discouraged hero worship of him in any and every form, but it still managed to manifest in certain ways regardless.

That was the thing about legacies: they took on lives of their own, whether or not their patron wanted them to.

Revan quickly went through the roll-call and glanced down at his lesson plan for the morning, stopping cold as he saw what was on the page, and realizing why his mind had subconsciously blocked it out.

The Mandalorian Wars.

_So _that's _why everyone is so quiet this morning, and there're so many new faces I don't recognize; even some new Knights dropped by._

"I assume," the Jedi began, "that you all came here this morning expecting to hear an account of my glorious exploits during the Wars: how I managed to never lose a single battle and came away being honored as a great hero of the Republic."

There was a murmur of agreement in the room, the student body wondering why Revan was bothering to restate the obvious when he could just get on with it instead.

"I thought as much," Revan said, "and honestly, if that was the view you held of the Wars, you wouldn't entirely be wrong. But I have a different view of them, one I will share with you now. I want you to close your eyes, all of you."

The Jedi said nothing more, waiting until everyone had realized he was being serious and had done as he had instructed.

"I want you to imagine your home-worlds, as clearly as you can. Think of every detail your mind can recall, from the feeling of its air to the smell to the number of blades of grass you pass by every time you walk from your house to the marketplace. Picture everyone you see on that walk; the old men wrangling over a game of cards, the children playing in the street, merchants hawking their wares and birds squawking from the tree-branches as they wake up. Do you see all of that?"

The students nodded, some enthusiastically, homesickness visible on their faces, some hesitantly, as if they were wondering where Revan was going with this.

"Good," the teacher continued. "Now, I want you to imagine that someone screams off in the distance. Not a shout of alarm, not the beginning of some meaningless argument, but a full-throated, panicked scream.

"'It's them,'" they shout. "'They're here! The Mandalorians are here!'

"And so you turn, and you start to run. You never thought they would come this far, or this fast; that they would strike this hard without giving you any warning. And yet they are here. Of all the planets in the Outer Rim, yours was the next one the Mandalorians chose to attack.

"You sprint, as hard and as fast as you can, hoping to outrun them. You've heard the stories around the campfire: the Mandalorians, they're butchers, demons given flesh with no regard for human life. If they don't kill you, they'll enslave you. And in some cases, that's a fate worse than death. But you always assumed it would happen to someone else. And so every time you kissed your mother or you loved ones good night, you did it with the assumption that the next night would end in just the same way.

"But then you hear the speeders. The engines are loud and raw and powerful, and they're gaining on you. Before you know it, you've been knocked to the side by a Mandalorian as their vehicle races by you. And it all goes black.

"And when you wake up, everything is gone. Everything you knew is ashen, a husk of what it once was. You wander back through the ruins of your town, past every monument and building-frame that's now little more than a needlessly-ornate gravestone, and you wonder why the people who took away everything you loved didn't take you as well. Why they bothered to leave you behind in this living hell. Why they left you with nothing but hatred in your stomach, and a heart of stone.

"That," Revan finished, "is the true face of war. There is no glory, and there are no triumphs; those are just things the victors spin up so that their soldiers can sleep a little easier at night. It was that feeling of hopelessness that started me down the path to the Dark Side, and that is why you should never, ever see war as a glorious undertaking. If it is necessary, it is a necessary evil; if it can be avoided, it should be.

"I only entered the Mandalorian Wars because I thought I had no other choice, and it was from out of that conflict that I became the Dark Lord of the Sith. And then Malak, my best friend and the apprentice I pulled to the Dark Side, took up the mantle after me. Even if I believe to this day that what I did ended the Wars, even if hordes of people tell me I did the right thing, there is still nothing I regret more than bringing the Jedi into that conflict."

The room held its silence for several moments, before someone spoke up. It was a Knight, and someone who, judging from the look on his face, had been expecting to hear something completely different.

"So, if the Mandalorians came again, or someone like them did," he asked, "would you say that we should stay out of the fight? That we should just sit back and watch while they laid waste to everything?"

Revan smiled bitterly and shook his head, finding it oddly nostalgic to hear his own words thrown back at him so many years later. His eyes passed over the room once and stopped as he saw a very familiar face in the back, the look in his loved one's eyes helping him to find his answer. After all, she had been the one who had given him the strength to bear the burden he had been given during the fight against Malak.

"That's not what I'm saying at all," the Jedi Master countered. "I just want each and every one of you to understand that war is not without its costs. The burden laid upon the survivors is a terrible one, and in some cases it can break your will completely. If you can face that possibility without flinching, and truly, without ego, believe that you can bear that burden, then you can go forward into war without fear. I only pray that you make it out the other side alive, or that you are never called to serve that function in the first place. Remember that, above all, the Jedi are a peacekeeping Order; not a standing military body."

"But then how did you do it?" a younger student asked. "If this cost is as big as you say it is, if this 'burden' is so bad, how did you go from being a Sith back to being a Jedi?"

Revan's smile lost its bitterness, and he allowed his memory to pass briefly back to his first duel with Bastila, the moment everything had changed for him.

"I…" here the Jedi paused, his eyes finding Bastila's again, glad to see she was still smiling at him. The same smile he woke up to every morning, and hopefully, would wake up to for several mornings to come.

"I got very, very lucky," Revan finished his thought, "and had someone there to lend me support when I needed it the most. If you take one thing away from this, let it be that the people sitting next to you now are your strongest allies, and should be treated as such. War will corrupt them, and take them from you… so if for no other reason than that, you should view war as a tool of last resort, and never otherwise."

The class was immobile until someone finally took their teacher's continued silence as a sign that the lesson was finished, rising slowly from her seat and walking out of the door. The rest of the students followed suit, some beginning to mumble amongst themselves when they assumed they wouldn't be overheard by their teacher.

Revan knew some of them would be angry, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't worried that he'd robbed the younger students of some of their idealistic innocence, but the last thing the Jedi wanted was for anyone to view what he had done in a positive light whatsoever. Those battles had ruined him, and it was only by the slimmest of chances that he'd been redeemed from the darkness that the Mandalorian Wars had plunged him into. The darkness where soldiers had been reduced to markers on a board, and whole swathes of people could be killed and deemed 'acceptable losses'.

"Well, if aging those kids ten years in the space of one lesson was your goal, Revan," Bastila said as the pair of them walked out of the room and down the hallway side-by-side, headed towards the meeting in the Council Chambers they were already late for, "I'd say you succeeded with flying colors. I wouldn't be shocked if half of the class vanishes overnight after that."

"Good," Revan said tersely. "If that's what it takes to stop them seeing me as a figure to look up to, then so be it."

Bastila sighed, wondering why Revan still insisted on dragging himself through the mud after all of this time for sins that pretty much the whole galaxy had forgiven him for.

"I saw firsthand what you're capable of, Revan… I was ready to kill you on the Star Forge, and you pulled me back from the Dark Side through your will alone. There hasn't been someone capable of that in centuries, Revan, if not more! People need that image of a hero to look up to!"

"They can keep looking up to you, Bastila," the Master countered, unmoved. "I deserve to stand as an example of the evils of the Dark Side, and not as a symbol of redemption: that's what you stand for, remember?"

Bastila sighed and fell silent, wondering what it would take for Revan to finally forgive himself, if even she couldn't convince him to let go of what he had once been.

* * *

The atmosphere in the Council's chamber when Bastila and Revan walked in ten minutes late to the meeting could at best be described as frigid, and at worst as bordering on outright hostile. At least as far as Master Vrook Lamar was concerned, anyway.

"You're late," he said sharply, his voice not possessing even a single ounce of tolerance. "Again."

"My apologies, Master Lamar," Revan said with a humble tilt of the head, before taking up his seat next to Master Vandar.

It had taken little time since Revan's return for him to be granted the rank of Master; his status as a figurehead for the possibility of redemption and the power of the Light Side of the force, in addition to his incredible popularity with the other Jedi in the Order, had made the appointment almost a formality. Revan himself had been absolutely opposed to it, but in the end he had accepted when the pressure to do so had become too great even for him to ignore.

Lamar grunted shortly in disdain, having taken it upon himself to be the sole voice of opposition to Revan's appointment on the Council. Ironically enough, for the very reasons Revan himself had given to begin with.

"Of all your traits, Revan," Lamar spoke scathingly, "I assume it is fitting that the one constant between your time as a Jedi Knight and Dark Lord of the Sith is your appalling arrogance."

"I believe you've made your point, my old friend," Master Vandar spoke up, his voice commanding in spite of the small frame from which it issued. "Continued belaboring of it will only serve to further elongate this meeting, and we have important matters to discuss. Bastila," the Jedi continued, turning to face the Knight who was having a hard time not feeling incredibly out of place, "if you would be so kind, please go and retrieve your padawan from her studies and bring her here—I believe it would do her good to observe the finer points of a mission briefing, and not simply the end result."

"Of course, Master Vandar," Bastila said with a graceful bow, before straightening up and walking from the chamber. After she was out of earshot, Zhar Lestin chuckled and spoke.

"She has grown strong, that one," the Twi'lek said appreciatively, "and far less tempestuous than she once was. I do not know how you managed it, Revan," he finished, "but it is most impressive. I do not doubt that she may soon join us on this Council, perhaps when one of us is summoned to the Temple of the Order on Coruscant."

"And if that day comes, it will be entirely on her own merit, Master Zhar," Revan replied evenly. "All I did was guide Bastila back to the Light, as she had done once for me; every step she has taken since then has been her own."

"And they have been many indeed," Master Dorak chimed in, "including the taking on of a padawan learner. Which reminds me, Revan; do you have any plans to instruct a padawan of your own? I can think of several younglings who have expressed quite the adamant desire to study under you, and the number seems to grow by the month."

Revan gave a drawn smile and shook his head.

"I utterly failed my first apprentice, Master Dorak," the Jedi replied, "and I am in no rush to risk repeating that failure. Every youngling I have heard profess a desire to learn from me has done so out of the want for glory, and that is the _last_ thing I want to condone as acceptable for a Jedi.

"I have no doubts, however, that if the Force sees it fit that I adopt a learner of my own, it will make its will known to me."

"Well said, Revan," Master Vandar opined. "You, too, have certainly matured in your time back amongst the Order."

Revan nodded humbly, ignoring the 'harumph' that Master Lamar sent his way. Before he could reply to the compliment, however, Bastila re-entered the Council chamber, a young Jedi 20 years of age trailing slightly behind her.

"Ah, you've returned," Master Vandar said warmly, his eyes moving from the Knight over to her padawan, who was standing stock-still and looked as though she was wondering if this was a court-martial.

"Please, be at ease, padawan," the Master spoke reassuringly. "This summons was not a disciplinary one in the slightest. Arina, I believe it was?"

The padawan nodded, her green eyes brightening as she gave a small smile.

"Yes, Master Vandar," Arina said as humbly as her excitement would allow. "I am truly honored you remember someone as insignificant as myself."

Master Vandar laughed, his small body shaking slightly from the action.

"Please do not sell yourself so short, young padawan," he said gently. "Every member of the Order is essential, from the Masters on this Council to the padawans. For as much as we Masters are the leaders of this Order, you padawans are the ones who will one day sit in these chairs, and guide the new generations of Jedi. It is a cycle with no end, only new beginnings; such as it is with the flow of the Force. It would do you well to keep this in mind, Arina."

"Of course, Master Vandar," the padawan said with a full bow this time, and Dorak began to speak once the room had settled again.

"You are here, Arina, because the Council has seen it fit to send you on a mission. There is a Jedi Knight who has decided to break from the ranks of our Order. Normally, this would not be a grave concern, but to say that this particular Jedi's leanings were 'militant' would be a firm understatement.

"As such, the Council has seen it fit to apprehend the Jedi in question and bring her before the Grand Council at Coruscant for questioning. We have decided to give this task to you, Arina: you have shown great aptitude for the Force, and your learning has progressed at a speed we have not seen here in this Enclave in some time."

Arina opened her mouth and closed it a few times, unsure whether to believe what she'd just heard or pinch herself to see if it was some kind of hallucination.

"I… I don't quite know what to say, Masters," she stammered out at last. "While I am grateful for your consideration, I think I must decline; someone as inexperienced as myself has absolutely no business going up against a trained, rogue Jedi Knight. Besides, my performance is nowhere near as praise-worthy as what you have indicated…"

The assembled Masters smiled at the response, pleased that Bastila's pupil had passed the test they had given her.

"And it is because you possess that mindset, young padawan," Master Vandar replied with a glint in his eyes, "that we believe you are indeed suited for this undertaking: your humility is the sign of a Jedi who knows themselves, and harbors none of the delusions of grandeur that are the first sirens of the path to the Dark Side. But do not fear- you will not be going on this mission alone. Your teacher, Bastila, will accompany you, as will a member of this Council: Master Revan has requested to partake in this mission personally, and as such he will travel along with the two of you."

"And if I may ask, Master Vandar," Arina managed to say, still reeling from what she'd been told, "where would we be going?"

"Kashyyyk," Revan answered, the smile not completely gone from his face. "My contact there has informed me that a female Jedi passed from the village of Rwookrrorro down into the Shadowlands not too long ago; if we hurry, we should be able to catch up before she moves on somewhere else."

"Then it would behoove the three of you to get moving right away," Master Zhar said, and Revan nodded. "Your ship has been fueled and is waiting, Revan. May the Force be with all of you."

The trio bowed and left, leaving the four Masters by themselves in the Enclave.

"It's dangerous," Master Lamar spoke sharply, "allowing the two of them such free reign. Relationships like theirs make things emotional, complicated and above all dangerously volatile; there is nothing quite like love when it comes to upsetting the balance of one's feeling."

"While I would normally agree with you there, old friend," Master Vandar replied calmly, "Bastila and Revan have always been a special case, from the moment their Force Bond was formed. It keeps them strong, and keeps them both aloft in the Light; as long as one knows that the other would go with them should they fall again to the Dark Side, they will do their utmost to keep from traveling down that path.

"And besides," the aged Jedi Master finished with a smile, "I believe all four of us are aware of the simple fact that there is no way those two could be pried apart by any means we possess, and to try to do so would only make things worse."

"So then, what would you suggest?" Master Lamar countered, unwilling to give up. "That we have faith in someone who has betrayed the Order in the gravest way possible to be able to control his emotions?"

"No, my old friend," Master Vandar answered. "I would suggest that you have faith in the flow of the Force, that which guides all things. A time of peace follows every time of great conflict, and straining to hold onto that peace by any means at all usually only serves to shorten it even more."

Master Lamar was silent, but his doubts of Revan's capacity to keep both himself and others free from the taint of the Dark Side remained firmly in his mind.

* * *

As the three Jedi walked out of the Enclave and back into the sunlight, headed towards the _Ebon Hawk_, Bastila looked over at her apprentice and arched an eyebrow.

"Something wrong?" she asked. "You're practically trembling; that's not like you."

"The Council…" Arina forced out at last, clenching her hands to stop them from shaking. "The Council called me up personally! That's- I mean, that's good, right, master? That's a good thing?"

"Of course it is, padawan," Bastila answered calmly. "The Council's aim wasn't to intimidate you, it was to show you they have faith in your abilities, the same as I do. You've done enough missions with me now that the Masters are ready to give you bigger responsibilities. Don't be so nervous; if you had even half of the faith in yourself that others have in you, you'd be a Knight by now."

"So you say, master," Arina replied, a slightly glum note taking the edge off of her energy. "But what if they're mistaken? While I do appreciate your confidence, I believe my performance on our missions speaks strongly to the contrary."

Bastila sighed, wondering what had led her pupil to set such impossible standards for herself.

"A Jedi's strength isn't measured in one way alone, and you know that," she said firmly, but not unkindly. "I'd rather have someone with your linguistic talents than some idiot who just knows how to fight, and nothing else; the true value of a Jedi is their ability to solve problems without violence, anyway."

"Up until the point that violence is the only recourse, master," Arina countered, and Revan finally broke his silence with a chuckle.

"If you do your job right, padawan," he said encouragingly, "it will never come to that. If there's one thing I've come to understand over the years, it's that a few well-placed words can be far more effective than the application of force when it comes to getting what you want or need. Besides, the Civil War is over; we need diplomats now much moreso than we need soldiers. Don't think of yourself as lagging behind, Arina. Soon enough, those who devoted their entire Academy training to combat are going to be scrambling to make up for lost time, while you'll be out running missions."

Revan's words helped alleviate Arina's doubts somewhat, but she was still clearly questioning herself judging by her troubled look.

Bastila was just glad she had the whole flight to Kashyyyk to try and get her apprentice back to normal: the Shadowlands were very unforgiving to those not prepared to face them.

* * *

.......

.........

**A/N:** And there you have it, Chapter 1 of 'Legacies'! I hope you guys and gals enjoyed it, and if you would be so kind as to drop a **review**, that would be fantastic. They keep me focused, something I'm sure my awesome beta **JasoTheArtisan** would tell you is a bit of a problem for me sometimes. I've got a pretty deep plot planned for this one, and I hope I'll see you along for the ride.


	2. Memories

**Legacies**

**Chapter 2: **Memories

* * *

"That should get us all the way to Kashyyyk without any interruptions," Revan said absently as his fingers finished tapping in the coordinates he knew by heart. "I'm going to go get some sleep; wake me if you two need anything."

Bastila's eyes followed her lover's retreating form worriedly for a few moments, sensing something troubled in his emotions, before shrugging and taking up her usual seat around the table that dominated the _Hawk's_ main area. Revan was almost impossible to reach when he walled himself up like this; if he wanted to talk about anything, Bastila knew that she would have to wait for him to come to her.

Looking over, she saw Arina already meditating and smiled; it seemed as though Revan's words earlier really had calmed the padawan down. Bastila couldn't help but feel partly responsible for Arina's timidity: rather than pushing her to confront whatever was at its source, which Bastila knew was a dangerous tactic as emotions quickly got involved, the teacher had instead encouraged her student to focus on bolstering her strengths to the point her weakness became immaterial. But the problem with such avoidance was that a flaw as fundamental as a total lack of self-confidence swiftly undermined Arina's performance in every other facet of her Jedi training. Her skill with a lightsaber was decent at best, and the padawan seemed to view the Force as some immense source of power that would corrupt her as soon as she tried to connect with it in any way deeper than simple telekinesis.

The one area Arina excelled at without peer was her skill with linguistics. She could speak multiple dialects of languages Bastila had only heard a few words of, and could even go toe-to-toe with Revan in a few of the more archaic forms of some tongues; her writing, for that matter, was also equally as accomplished.

But even the padawan's innate talent seemed to lose its luster in the face of her own lack of self-confidence; immersed as Arina was in the warrior-philosopher culture of the Jedi, she had come to see her knack with languages as more of an unnecessary triviality than a practical boon. Bastila had specifically requested missions to esoteric planets like Rodia and Champala in order to demonstrate the value of Arina's passive skills, but it felt like no matter how much the padawan did, it was never enough. It was beyond clear to Bastila at this point that her student had set some kind of goal for herself, and that whatever it was, she wasn't getting any closer to reaching it. It was the only explanation for why Arina would choose to ignore what she possessed to focus on what she had yet to attain, and why she would push herself so hard to reach higher.

And that worried Bastila immensely, because she saw a reflection of herself in her padawan. She had been just like Arina when she was younger, feeling pressured by her talent with Battle Meditation to distinguish herself in other ways to avoid having her biggest asset become her biggest burden. That pressure had driven her to be disdainful of praise and incredibly harsh when it came to judging herself, a combination that had planted the seeds for the deeply rooted doubts Malak had preyed upon when he had twisted Bastila into a servant of the Dark Side.

The Knight didn't want that to happen to her own student, but found herself faced with a difficult choice: to do nothing in the hopes that Arina would come face-to-face with her own demons in her own time while the padawan continued to dig herself deeper into a hole of self-doubt, or to press Arina into confronting her flaws and risk accelerating a possible slip towards the Dark Side.

But that risk, Bastila realized, was part of being a teacher. It was her job to be there to keep her student from succumbing to the temptation the Dark Side presented, just as Revan had done for her on the Star Forge. Letting Arina languish instead of extending a helping hand would be not only an affront to her position as a teacher of Jedi philosophy, but also a betrayal of all the trust her student had placed within her. Making up her mind, Bastila took one last moment to gather her thoughts and spoke.

"Arina," she said, just loudly enough to rouse her student from her meditation and get her attention, "what's troubling you?"

"Troubling me, master?" the padawan repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Nothing, really. I'm just trying to clear my head before we reach Kashyyyk."

Bastila shook her head, rising to her feet and motioning for her apprentice to do the same.

"I don't mean right now, padawan," she clarified, "I mean in general. I can feel doubt hanging over you like a shroud, clouding your mind… and it will remain there until you decide to let it go of your own accord."

Arina shook her head, taking a moment to run her hand back through her short, sandy-blonde hair before turning away from her master's penetrating gaze.

"It's nothing," she said, knowing that the words rang hollow. "Nothing worth worrying yourself over, master."

"Nothing is so insignificant as to be worthless, padawan," Bastila replied sternly, "and especially not when it comes to your feelings. When have I ever not made time to talk to you in the past?"

Bastila felt bad about resorting to guilt-tripping her apprentice into speaking her mind, but it seemed like the only tactic left for her to try at this point. The pointed question seemed to have its desired effect on Arina, as she sighed and slumped forward under the mental weight she was carrying. Bastila walked over and gently took her student's hand into her own, leading her over to the nearby bank of seats and settling into one.

"Now," the Knight said softly as her student followed suit and sat down next to her, "what's wrong?"

Arina slowly separated her hand from Bastila's placing it in her lap on top of her other one and twining her fingers together anxiously.

"It's just…" the padawan began hesitantly, before pausing and taking a moment to swallow her apprehension. "I really think the Council made a mistake sending me on such an important mission, master."

Bastila bit back a sigh, wondering if her earlier words had even gotten through to her apprentice.

"Did I not just tell you that they didn't?" the Knight said, fighting to keep from sounding exasperated. "You've demonstrated your skill to me on several missions by now; the Council read those reports, and judged you fit to tackle an assignment of greater importance. Why would that be a mistake, padawan?"

"No, that's not it, master," Arina protested, shaking her head before lifting it up to look Bastila in the eyes. "My skills or my abilities have nothing to do with this. I just don't think… I don't think I'm fit to be a Jedi."

It was a judgment Bastila had heard several students voice over the years during her time in the Order, but the way in which she heard Arina say it now put her on edge like it never had before. It was probably partly because Bastila identified far more closely with Arina than any other learner she had taught, but it was also because she had never heard those words spoken with such firm belief giving them weight. It wasn't an overwhelmed, childish statement of denial or fear at the daunting prospect of training: Arina truly felt she wasn't worthy to wear the robes of a Jedi, and that feeling was no doubt the source of her shaken confidence.

Now all Bastila had to do was figure out what had happened to her to ingrain such a point of view within her padawan.

"Don't be ridiculous, Arina," she chided her. "Why would you ever think that way about yourself? Even now, after everything you've accomplished for the Order?"

The younger woman was silent for a few moments, her eyes unfocused as she seemed to wrestle with something inside of herself. Soon enough they had cleared once again, but now the nervousness that had lain within them was supplanted completely by guilt.

"Because it was never my intention to accomplish anything for the Order, master," Arina answered. "I joined the Jedi for a different reason; for the _wrong_ reason."

"And what reason would that be, padawan?"

"I want revenge," Arina replied, her voice taking on a hardness that Bastila had never heard before as her student dove deep back into her memories. "Someone was taken from me, and ever since then I've wanted to find the one who did it and _hurt_ them. And that hatred… I try, but I can't let it go, master."

Bastila felt the raw honesty in her student's words and, while it stung that she hadn't confided in her sooner, the Knight understood perfectly well why her padawan had been hesitant. Shame, fear, self-loathing; they were all emotions that, no matter how human they might have been, were harshly frowned upon by the core tenets of the Jedi Order. In a case like Arina's, however, it was obvious that the doctrine of bottling up or ignoring one's baser feelings would do much more harm than good.

"What happened?" Bastila asked after a few heartbeats, smiling comfortingly at the guarded look her padawan gave her. "Don't worry," she said reassuringly, "I'm not going to report any of what we've said here back to the Council. This is strictly between you and me, Arina."

The padawan seemed to waver for a moment longer, before making up her mind once and for all and nodding resolutely.

"Well, I guess I should start at the beginning," she said. "The truth is, you weren't the first person to start instructing me in the ways of the Force, master."

The admission grabbed Bastila's attention immediately. Not including the time she had spent searching for the Star Forge with Revan, Arina had been her padawan for three years now; she still remembered the day she'd run into the then-seventeen-year-old street urchin on Nar Shaddaa, having stopped on the moon to investigate the latest slavery-related outrage committed by the Hutts. Bastila had been following up on a lead when she'd stumbled across Arina using a crude form of Force-manipulation to steal some food from an unsuspecting fruit vendor and, curious, had taken her under her wing to see if she could be suitable for Jedi training. Bastila had known that normally a candidate so old would never have been accepted, but Arina had insisted she'd never received any formal training before, and that level of control in a raw adept had been impressive indeed. And when she'd gone on to reveal her impressive command over linguistics, it became clear to Bastila that the young woman deserved far better than languishing in filth on the Smuggler's Moon.

"So when you said you'd had no prior teachers, the very fact that got you into the Academy to begin with—"

"I was lying, yes," Arina finished, feeling more ashamed now than ever. "And I apologize for having deceived you like that- but you have to understand: my life was falling apart back then… I had no one, and when you suggested I had a chance at joining the Jedi Order… well, it seemed like the perfect way to put everything behind me and start over!" Arina sighed and deflated, feeling crushed now that the truth she had kept veiled for so long had come out. If she was lucky, Bastila would merely disown her as a student and the Council would never hear about her again. If she was unlucky, well… Arina didn't want to think about that.

"Except, in the end," the padawan finished, "I guess there were some things I couldn't run away from."

"Like your old master?" Bastila pressed, keeping her voice as level as she could. "Who were they? What happened to them?"

Arina hesitated again at the small barrage of questions, her hands beginning to shake again before she clenched them and quelled the trembling.

"Well, that's the thing," the padawan answered at length. "My former teacher… he was murdered. I was there when it happened, but I couldn't stop it. The assassin… he was injured enough afterward that he fled without killing me as well. That's how I wound up alone."

Bastila felt and saw all of the pieces falling into place and she understood, with aching clarity, why Arina felt how she did. The Knight could also tell from her padawan's silence and the expectant look she was giving her that she had an important decision before her: either rebuke Arina for lying and remand her to the Council for disciplining, or take the revelation in stride and try to use it to help solve the problem that was tormenting the young woman so severely. It took Bastila all of five seconds' thought to come to the answer, and she smiled again.

"Thank you for being honest with me, my padawan," she said sincerely running one of her hands gently through Arina's hair. "To be honest, I completely understand why that was a part of your past you had no desire to revisit. Witnessing the death of someone close to you in any way is a terrible thing, and it is made even more terrible when they're taken from us before their time. I assume the vengeance you spoke of getting earlier was towards the one who killed your teacher?"

Arina nodded, tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes as they became hazy with the recollection of the incident.

"I couldn't do anything to stop him," she repeated, her voice breaking slightly around the edges. "I think he was a Sith, because he used a lightsaber and he didn't act at all like any Jedi I've ever met. He was wearing some kind of hooded cloak; I couldn't see his face, and he left right after killing Rhion."

Arina broke off and shook her head in frustration and shame, relieved that Bastila was being as supportive as she was but too torn by revisiting the old trauma to be anything more than numb.

"Rhion?" Bastila asked after waiting for Arina to come back to herself. "Was that your teacher's name?"

Arina nodded.

"Yeah," she answered, pausing to wipe once at her eyes. "He was an Echani."

"Your former master was an Echani?"

The two women looked over at the sound of the unexpected voice to see Revan leaning against a round doorframe, his look oddly detached.

"Maybe we should have been training you in hand-to-hand combat before moving up to a lightsaber, then. Bastila," he continued, his eyes and voice both becoming more serious as they focused on the Knight, "can I speak with you for a moment?"

Bastila was more than a little surprised by Revan listening in on such a sensitive conversation, but if there was anyone she could trust to keep something to himself, it was her lover. Nodding once, she rose to her feet and Arina followed suit. Turning to face her student, Bastila put her hands on Arina's shoulders and smiled.

"Whatever happens," she said, "I'm going to be your teacher, for as long as I am able. If you ever feel another burden crushing you like that again, don't think twice about giving some of it to me."

Bastila left without another word, following in Revan's wake, and Arina soon collapsed back down onto the seat she had risen from. The padawan felt stricken on the one hand that she'd been forced to relive such a horrific moment from her past. But at the same time, though, Bastila's acceptance had been more complete than Arina could ever have hoped for.

Arina's mouth turned upwards into a small smile, one that had soon grown into a full, contented grin. She truly didn't deserve such a benevolent and understanding teacher; if only to repay her master's kindness, the padawan resolved, she was going to try her best to let go of the hatred she had held on for so long.

* * *

_The stone slab of a door slid open almost mutely, making way for the cloaked figure on its other side to walk into the large room. The room's sole occupant turned to face the visitor, the old Trandoshan's rust-orange eyes narrowing as his vocal cords clicked in a short but pointed note of annoyance._

"_You're late, boy."_

_The newcomer lowered the hood of his cloak, exposing a face to the sickly light that was a younger mirror of the one across from it._

"_You were expecting me?"_

"_I've been expecting you since the day you were born," Arnok answered, puling his lightsaber into his hand with the Force and igniting it. "Did you think waiting for me to die of old age was an acceptable method of achieving victory?"_

_Jerissk smiled and drew his own lightsaber, holding the red blade down at an angle by his side in the opening stance of Makashi._

"_There are no inacceptable methods of achieving victory," the younger Trandoshan replied. "You taught me that."_

_Arnok gave the smallest of nods, beginning to walk slowly toward his pupil. _

"_Then come," the Blademaster said, "and we shall see what else you've learned."_

_Father and son approached each other slowly and methodically, each of them knowing it was foolish to make the first move and open yourself up to a counter-attack before making sure that you knew exactly where and when that counter-attack would be._

"_I sense fear in you," Arnok said as his movement forward curved and the combatants began to circle, the final moments before the duel would begin in earnest. "Don't tell me you're giving up already?"_

"_Are your senses dulling that quickly these days?" Jerissk asked with a smirk as he moved forward swiftly, striking out and clashing sharply with his father's lightsaber. "I'm not afraid; I'm excited."_

"_Emotions have no place in battle," the Blademaster retorted evenly, using his superior position to break the deadlock with a forward shove and move on the offensive. The direct, sweeping and powerful blows of Shii-Cho would have been full of openings against a single opponent- if anyone other than the Blademaster of the Sith had been using it. As it was, Jerissk found himself pushed firmly on the retreat as he had to use every bit of his skill and focus just to avoid losing a limb._

"_What is this?" Arnok hissed disdainfully as he pushed his son away from him with a single powerful strike, choosing to remain where he was as Jerissk staggered backwards, rather than press his advantage. "If you've bothered to challenge me formally, at least make it more interesting than training against droids. And don't hold back any longer, or the next strike I make will sever your blade arm."_

_Jerissk bit back his reply as it rose to his lips, realizing that he hadn't been taking this fight seriously enough at all. The idea of finally facing down the one who had trained him in the brutal ways of the Sith since he could walk had sent anticipation rushing through every vein of Jerissk's body, and his lack of concentration had almost gotten him killed. But why hadn't his master finished him off?_

"_I don't think I'm the only one who's holding back," the acolyte countered, shifting his lightsaber back to a neutral stance as he remembered what he had been taught for so many years. _

_The epitome of the Combat Forms was to have no form. Adaptability was key; to be able to stay within the eye of the storm while extending your focus out into the tempest and maintaining it. The ability to counter every attack was as essential as being able to mount an effective offense: if your arm was severed, the battle was lost no matter how effective you were with the blade._

"_It looks like you've calmed down," the Blademaster said evenly. "Now, let us begin."_

_The two Sith clashed again, their lightsabers seeming to move almost on their own as the wielders calculated and re-calculated their attack and defense based on the tiniest glimmer of a reaction from their enemy. Deliberate Makashi ebbed into defensive Soresu, before flowing towards calculated Shien, shifting to pressuring Djem So as the intensity of the duel increased even higher, until the crescendo peaked with both opponents utilizing the crushing strength of Juyo. _

_Jerissk grimaced as he felt his arms beginning to tire; he might have slightly edged out his father in strength, but experience weighed heavily on the Blademaster's side. If he didn't end this duel quickly, he might not make it out alive._

"_What are you waiting for?" Arnok hissed, plainly reading the doubt that was beginning to bleed into his son's mind. "I can sense your fear; use it! Let it lie idly, and it is nothing more than poison. Yoke it to your advantage, and persevere!"_

"_Shut up!" Why was he giving out advice at a time like this? Did he want to die? If his master had decided to forfeit the duel, Jerissk could think of about twenty ways it could have been easier to do. _

"_Ah yes," Arnok said appreciatively as he felt his son's strength resurging, "_there_ is the hatred I've been waiting to see. What took you so long to embrace it? Have you been shackled by the bond that runs in our blood?"_

"_Sentiment like that means nothing to me," Jerissk spat back, continuing to strike again and again as his anger and disgust propelled him forward. He was sure his muscles were running on adrenaline at this point, but he was too infuriated to care. "I haven't thought of you as my father since the day you cut off my right hand for missing a block during training."_

"_So you say," Arnok countered calmly, "but your feelings betray you; they always have. You're hesitating to sever the only tie you've ever had with someone, apart from your mother."_

_Jerissk's frown deepened at the mention of his mother, his rush of attacks slowing almost imperceptibly, but just enough to show the Blademaster that his words had taken root._

"_What does she have to do with any of this?" the younger Sith asked. "She's dead; she died years ago!"_

"_Yes, she did," Arnok answered, clashing in a deadlock and pushing forward enough to whisper into his son's ear. _

"_Because I killed her."_

_Jerissk's reaction to the revelation was primal, brutal and swift, the ring of truth in his father's words pushing his hatred to a level of all-encompassing wrath the young Trandoshan had never felt before. His mother, despite being a Sith herself, had always been the kindest of Jerissk's teachers, extending more help to him than any of his other instructors at the Academy ever had._

"_Her sympathy towards you made both of you weak," Arnok continued while he fended off the vicious barrage of blows, "and that was something we Sith cannot allow. The strong survive and rule, the weak quail and die. This is our way, such as it has been before Revan, and such as it will be long after he is dead."_

_Jerissk said nothing, lost to speech and reason as he became little more than the focal point of his own rage, the vessel through which all of his hatred expressed itself in a single, violent cataclysm. _

_When the tunnel that his vision had become broadened and cleared again, the young Sith saw with shock that he had managed to stab his father through the right lung, pinning him to the wall with the red blade. _

"_Heh… not bad," Arnok said with a grim smile, feeling his crushed bones grinding against his collapsing lung as his breaths came in shaky wheezes. "I don't think I can… grow this back."_

_Jerissk retracted his lightsaber with no small amount of horror, as the weight of his action finally settled down over him. He had hated this man for years, almost two full decades, and had dreamed of his death more than a few times, and yet…_

_He was still his father. And now he was dying, at Jerissk's own hand._

"_I'm proud of you," the Blademaster rasped as he lay on the floor, back propped up against the wall, while Jerissk knelt beside him. "This was meant to act as your sacrifice… the final step of your training. You put aside the bond we shared, and embraced the way of the Sith in its place. You… you'll grow into a strong warrior, Jerissk," Arnok finished, his voice fading to a whisper. "Your name will be known alongside Revan's, throughout the Order. This, I have foreseen. But… whatever you do… don't let that other kid… kill you…"_

_The Blademaster's voice trailed off into silence and his head sunk forward, still. Jerissk did nothing for several heartbeats, before reaching forward slowly and taking the Terentatek fang from around his father's neck. It was the symbol of the Sith Blademaster, the heirloom passed down from one to the next. As Jerissk slipped the cord around his own neck, he felt the weight of his father's legacy come to rest with the fang over his heart._

_His path was clear now. Just as his father had foretold, he would take up the mantle of Blademaster and lead the Sith's charge against the Jedi, not stopping until they had been completely eradicated from the Galaxy._

* * *

"So," Bastila asked as the vision faded from her mind, "what do you suppose it means?"

Revan shrugged, leaning back against the wall adjacent to the cot he was sitting on.

"I'm not entirely sure," the other Jedi answered, "but that's the second time today alone that I've had a vision concerning the two of them. No way that was coincidental; the Force is trying to tell me something, Bastila, but I have no idea what it is."

"The second time?" Bastila asked, arching an eyebrow. "Who were they, Revan? Did you know them from before?"

"Yeah," Revan replied with a nod. "The older one, at least. Arnok. He was the Blademaster at the Academy on Korriban when I was the Sith Lord. He was also my Shadow Hand; I must have sent him out on at least forty assassination missions alone."

Bastila could tell from the look in her lover's eyes that Revan despised revisiting this part of his past, but she had to agree with him that there was no way these visions had been coincidental. The Force was trying to say something, and ignoring that voice for too long was oftentimes disastrous.

"And the younger one, Jerissk, was his son?"

Revan nodded again.

"I don't remember seeing any Trandoshans when we attacked the Academy on Korriban, though," he mused. "Jerissk must have been off-world at the time. If we're lucky, he deserted the Sith and became a freelancer."

"And if we're not?" Bastila prodded. "Do you really think he could pose a threat to you?"

Revan nodded, and pointed at the scar framing his eye.

"Arnok was the one who gave me this," he said. "And if Jerissk really killed him, I have no doubts whatsoever that the kid could at least hold his own against a Master for a while, if not manage to defeat one. Along with that regenerating ability all Trandoshans possess, killing him would be quite difficult."

The pair continued to discuss the vision and its possible meanings as the _Ebon Hawk_ began its descent into Kashyyyk's atmosphere, unaware that Arina was pressed to the wall on the other side of the door, here eyes narrowed.

The padawan didn't know why, but the mention of Trandoshans stirred something in her, something violent, and she was afraid of it. It was a darkness hovering on the edge of her mind, and Arina had no desire to uncover what it was or why it was there. Pushing the thoughts out of her mind, the padawan walked back over to the bank of seats and sat down, bracing herself for the final landing on the Wookie home-world.

* * *

........

...........

**A/N:** Character development, it is good times. Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, and **please review**; it's awesome to hear from you all, and it keeps my writing going at a steady clip. This chapter was a bit of a breather, but things will definitely be picking up in the next installment once the crew lands on Kashyyyk.

Massive props must also go out once again to my beta on this fic, **JasoTheArtisan**, who is like a proofreading Marine Drill Sergeant in the best possible way.


	3. Shadow

**Legacies**

**Chapter 3:** Shadow

* * *

Revan, Bastila and Arina walked down the ramp of the _Ebon Hawk_ and into the capital village of Rwookrrorro. The air was damp with moisture thanks to the massive branches of the _wroshyr_ trees spread out above the city, but they weren't so far down yet as to block out the light of the sun.

Instead of meeting the one of the Chieftain Freyyr's Wookies upon disembarking, though, the trio was met with a face that was simultaneously very unexpected and very familiar.

"Hey guys," the young blue Twi'lek known as Mission Vao greeted her former comrades with a smile. "What's up?"

Revan and Bastila took the appearance of their old friend in stride with typical Jedi calm, while Arina's face contorted into an expression of pure confusion at seeing a Twi'lek in a place like this.

"More of the same, Mission," Bastila replied with a smile. "What brings you here to Kashyyyk?"

"What do you think, Bastila?" Mission countered, falling in beside Revan and Bastila as they began to walk down the wooden-plank path, a bewildered Arina trailing along behind them. "Now that the War's over, I figured it would do me some good to settle down somewhere; figure some things out. Take a break from life on the road, you know. And since Zaalbar's staying here, Kashyyyk seemed as good a place as any. I mean, that guy's not gonna look after himself, am I right?"

"Um, master," Arina broke in hesitantly, "forgive me for interrupting, but who is this?"

Bastila slowed her pace and looked back over her shoulder. "This is Mission Vao, a Twi'lek who helped us destroy the Star Forge during the War. Mission, this is Arina, my padawan learner."

The Twi'lek turned partway around and smiled broadly, extending her hand.

"I didn't even know Bastila had an apprentice," she said jovially. "Pleased to meet you!"

Arina was slightly put off coming face-to-face with someone so exuberant; no one in the Jedi Order had this girl's openness and enthusiasm, and her cheerfulness was disarmingly sincere.

"Nice to meet you, too," the padawan replied, taking the offered hand and shaking it. The group walked along for a few more minutes in silence, until the Jedi Master cleared his throat and spoke.

"I received a report from Zaalbar about a Jedi who had come through here recently, and down into the Shadlowlands," he said, and the Twi'lek sighed.

"I was afraid you were going to ask me that," she said. "I was hoping this was just a casual visit, but I guess I should've known better."

"Well? Have there been any developments?"

"None so far, my friend," a powerful, rumbling voice broke in, and the Jedi looked over to see Zaalbar standing at the end of the walkway. He was no longer wearing the red vest of his travels, but had adopted the more subdued mantle of village royalty. Revan was inwardly glad to see that his comrade had been fully accepted back into the society he had once been exiled from, but there was no time for reminiscing with a rogue Jedi still loose.

"I would like to think that the creatures of the Shadowlands have already dealt with her," Zaalbar continued, "but knowing how powerful you Jedi are, I doubt it."

"I understand," Revan answered. "Don't worry; the Jedi are self-policing for a reason, and we will take care of our problems ourselves. I'm just relieved to hear that no Wookies were harmed by the deserter before she descended down into the Shadowlands."

"And hey, you've got experience hunting down Jedi, right, Revan?" Mission joked, realizing only after being met with a heavy silence that she'd overstepped her bounds.

"Yes, Mission," the Jedi Master replied flatly. "If nothing else, I have that. Zaalbar, as much as I'd enjoy greeting your father, I think it would be best if we descended to the forest floor right away."

"Of course," Zaalbar replied, leading the rest of the way over to the basket that would lower the group down into the Shadowlands. "Before you start tracking, though, there's something else you should know."

"And that is?"

"There was another interloper who visited our village about two days ago," Zaalbar explained. "He didn't feel like a Jedi or a Sith, but the Force definitely flowed through him. He carried a lightsaber at his waist, and he also stank of the predators."

"Stank?" Bastila asked, confused by the Wookie's phrasing. "What do you mean 'stank', Zaalbar?"

"I never saw his face, Bastila," Zalbaar replied, "but there's no doubt he was one of the hunters. Those who stalk our people for sport, to appease their Goddess. The Trandoshans."

"Is that so?" Revan mused, beginning to wonder if his visions were finally showing their pertinence. "Did this Trandoshan descend into the Shadowlands as well?"

Zaalbar nodded.

"The last our scouts saw of him, he'd climbed onto a _wroshyr_ tree and was making his way down the trunk. I told my soldiers not to attack unless attacked first; a Trandoshan is dangerous enough with its hands alone, and we've never fought one holding a lightsaber."

"That was a wise course of action, Zaalbar," Bastila commended, "and we thank you for the warning. Revan, whenever you're ready."

The Master nodded and pulled the lever beside the basket, beginning the long descent down into the Shadowlands.

"Revan," Bastila asked pointedly, "do you think the Trandoshan might be Jerissk?"

"I don't know of that many Force-sensitive Trandoshans," the Master answered, "much less those that have enough practice with the Force to be able to conceal the nature of their alignment from others. That's an assassin's technique."

"Should we assume this guy, whoever he is, is a Sith soldier?" Arina asked, and both senior Jedi nodded.

"My guess is that whoever he's working for has gotten word that a Jedi's broken ranks," Revan said. "Not only does that make for a potential recruit, but even if she won't join the Dark Side, this rogue of ours is still a font of information. Information that any Sith splinter groups would be very interested in knowing."

"So we go down there, find the Jedi and extract her before the Trandoshan does," Arina declared. "Sounds simple enough to me."

"Don't forget he's had two days' head-start, Arina," Revan countered, "and that to a Trandoshan, tracking is as natural as breathing. I might have only been able to find one or two Force-sensitives during my time as a Sith Lord, but I can tell you there were quite a few normal Trandoshans in my hunting parties."

The padawan was silent; sometimes she forgot that the Jedi Master both she and her teacher held in such high esteem had once been the Dark Lord of the Sith. And judging from the look on Revan's face, the memories of that time hadn't left him in peace, despite his former Empire's fall.

"If I may ask, Master Revan," Arina began, "did you have any sort of contingency plan in place, in case your attack on the Republic failed, or you and Malak both fell from power?"

"Yes, I did," the Master replied. "Several, in fact. But if the Sith are one thing by nature, it's contentious. In the absence of strong central leadership, fracturing and squabbling are inevitable."

"Which is worse, in a way," Bastila said. "Because now, instead of dealing with one unified group, we'll have deal with several at once, all moving independently."

"True," Revan allowed, "but for now, we shouldn't let possibilities and probabilities interfere with our focus. What matters is the mission at hand; we can worry about larger problems later."

"And if we're fortunate," Arina chimed in, "they'll all wipe each other out before we have to do anything ourselves."

"Unfortunately, padawan," Revan said, "I made sure to recruit better troops than that."

The trio was quiet for several minutes, until a question that had been gnawing away at Arina's conscience couldn't be ignored any longer.

"If this Jedi we're tracking refuses to cooperate, are we authorized to use deadly force?"

"That's never an authorization we're given except in times of all-out war against the Sith, Arina," Bastila said sharply. "Sever a limb if you absolutely must, but the objective is to bring the rogue back with us _alive_."

"Understood, master," the padawan replied, slightly shamed. "Please forgive my impertinence. I'm just… unnerved by all of this, is all."

"Which is perfectly understandable," Bastila replied, her tone softening. "We all have our moments; we're not droids, nor do I expect you to act like one. But don't allow your nerves to get the best of you, either, my padawan: Revan and I are here as assurance that everything goes smoothly."

"Besides, Bastila and I have traversed the Shadowlands before," the Master added. "Apart from a few Katarn and the odd overgrown swamp lizard, there's nothing down here that could pose a threat to us in the way of wildlife."

"That's good to know, at least," Arina said, just as the basket came to a stop on the forest floor.

"All right, let's get going," Revan ordered. "And stay together; the last thing you want to be in a place like this is alone."

* * *

As much as he hated Kashyyyk's inhabitants, Jerissk had to admit that the planet made for one incredible hunting ground. The sheer number of ambush spots was enough to make any self-respecting hunter giddy, and the _wroshyr_ trees were big enough to simultaneously provide cover with their trunks and an alternate path of travel along their branches. That way, if any terrain was ever encountered that made leaving tracks unavoidable, it could be bypassed without issue.

And against the quarry he was hunting now, any kind of opening he was careless enough to leave would most certainly be exploited without compunction or mercy. And the Scorekeeper, whose eyes saw all, would not look down upon a botched hunt with charity. Jerissk had once served the Sith, but that time was over; now, his only loyalty was to his Goddess and himself. The lightsaber at his side was now a weapon devoid of a higher significance, just like any other. A weapon he was immensely skilled with, but a weapon nonetheless.

The Trandoshan hissed in anger as he felt the wind shift, carrying the scent of his prey along with it. The Jedi he was tracking was already hard enough to pin down as it was; the last thing Jerissk needed was nature working against him as well. The reward put out on this Jedi since she'd broken away from the protective canopy of the Order was high indeed, and the young Trandoshan wasn't about to let it slip into the hands of a different bounty hunter.

Running with surprising light-footedness for a creature of his size, Jerissk hurried to the end of the branch he was perched on and leapt towards a thick hanging vine, trusting it would bear his weight long enough to carry him across the gap that separated this tree from the next. The vine held, and the Trandoshan continued to run without missing a beat. He could feel his quarry's presence on the very edge of his senses, and knew that it wouldn't be long before the Jedi knew her pursuer had renewed the chase. Jerissk's attunement with the Force had never been what he would call exemplary, and if he could pick up on the fleeing Knight's trail, he was certain she would be able to return the favor in kind.

But then Jerissk felt another group of lifeforms entering the range of his senses and skidded to a sharp halt, holding still for a moment in order to feel out the new arrivals. Their affinity with the Force was slim to nonexistent; far too low for any Jedi. The Trandoshan sniffed the wind and caught a scent he knew instinctively, his mouth curving up into a sharp smile.

He'd never been so glad to happen upon a pack of hunting Wookies. Not only would this garner him an abundance of favor in the eyes of the Scorekeeper, but it was Jerissk's hope that the Jedi would also be drawn out into the open, hoping to score a blow against her enemy while he was otherwise occupied. Altering his course, the young Trandoshan hastened along the _wroshyr's_ branch and repelled surely down the trunk, his claws and taloned feet providing traction in the thick bark. Not concerned with stealth this time, Jerissk rushed toward the Wookies as fast as he could, his keen nose following their reeking smell. The hunter considered arming the thermal detonator at his waist, but thought against it and ignited his lightsaber with a grin.

It had been a while since he'd had some decent practice with his blade.

The Wookies turned to face the Trandoshan as he burst out of the brush, wasting no time in facing the enemy and firing off energy bolts from their bowcasters. But the reptilian warrior was too fast, the red lightsaber deflecting each bolt with elegant ease.

"If you want to kill me," Jerissk taunted, "why not show me some of that brute strength you ferals are known for?"

One of the Wookies took the bait and charged, too blinded by his anger to see how outmatched he was. The Wookie that seemed to be leader of the hunting party howled in warning, but it was far too late. Jerissk switched his lightsaber into a reversed grip and slashed forward, slicing the Wookie clean in two. Facing the other five opponents, the former Sith Blademaster tossed his lightsaber a short distance into the air and caught it again, switching the grip back to normal in the process.

"Twenty… forty… sixty… eighty… one-hundred points," Jerissk counted out, while the Wookies took a moment to try and concoct a plan of attack. "Clearly, the Scorekeeper is smiling upon me."

Three of the Wookies growled and charged, clearly hoping to overwhelm their opponent. The Trandoshan immediately saw the line of attack that would fell all three of them at once, but he wasn't here to make the slaughter neat and tidy. He was here to make it last. Long enough, at least, so that the furtive Jedi would make herself known. Which wasn't the worst thing in the world, either; Trandoshans, by their very nature, never shied away from the opportunity to cause a Wookie some suffering.

A swift, precise stroke relieved one warrior of his right arm, and Jerissk rolled quickly to the left to avoid the counter-strike from one of the wounded Wookie's allies. The former Blademaster rose quickly to his feet and stabbed forward, collapsing the second Wookie's lung. Swinging his lightsaber hard back to the right and down, Jerissk severed the third Wookie's left leg, immobilizing the trio of attackers before they'd even so much as landed a blow.

The other two Wookies ceased planning and charged, the sloppy attack fueled by the same rage that blinded them to the futility of even trying to win the fight. Jerissk kicked one of the downed Wookies as hard as he could, lifting the large warrior into the air and crashing down into his two allies. Pausing for a moment to let the other two wounded beasts howl and make their location even more obvious, the Trandoshan then took his lightsaber in hand and separated the two Wookies' heads from their shoulders. This done, he walked calmly over to the final three, not even breaking stride as he held them down with the Force using one hand and carved the Wookies up into a meal for the Katarns with the red blade in the other.

"Just the kind of pointless barbarism and brutality I would expect from a Trandoshan Sith. I'll be doing the Force a favor by killing you."

Jerissk chuckled as he turned to face his new challenger.

"You have that half right, Jedi," he countered. "But I'm not a Sith; not anymore, at least. And you say you're going to kill me? I was under the impression you Jedi were pacifists."

The rogue Jedi warrior smirked, igniting her yellow lightsaber and advancing on the Trandoshan.

"Well, I guess we have more in common than I thought then, Trandoshan," she said. "I'm not a Jedi; not anymore, at least."

"It's a good thing your self-perception doesn't make the price on your head any smaller," Jerissk said with a smirk to mirror his enemy's. "You've been causing some powerful people a lot of trouble since you broke off from the Order, Jedi."

"All of it more than deserved, I assure you," she replied, her eyebrows raising in surprise as she saw the fang hanging around Jerissk's neck.

"That's… that's a Terentatek fang!" she exclaimed. "You killed one of them?"

"Even better, Jedi," the Trandoshan answered, his smirk widening into a bloodthirsty grin. "I killed the one who killed the Terentatek." The former Sith ignited his lightsaber once more, taking up his preferred stance of Makashi. "Care to see how I did it?"

The Jedi made no reply, choosing to make the opening move in the duel instead. She rushed forward, lashing out at her opponent with a sharp strike that was blocked and deflected with infuriating ease.

The Trandoshan retaliated with a quick series of carefully calculated strikes, pushing back on his enemy's guard before breaking it completely and scoring a grazing hit on her side. The Jedi hissed in pain, leaping backwards a few paces with the aid of the Force and shifting her stance to the more defensive Soresu. Jerissk closed the gap with a sharp lunge, intent on cracking his opponent's defense again before the Jedi got set in her form. A master Soresu practitioner was a pain in the ass to deal with, and Jerissk wasn't about to elongate this duel any more than was absolutely necessary.

The Jedi moved to the left and barely avoided the lunge, smiling as the Trandoshan moved past her, completely open. She struck and severed his left arm, watching in satisfaction as the dead limb fell to the ground, its fingers still twitching reflexively. Jerissk roared in anger, turning to face the Jedi with fury in his eyes.

"You cut off the wrong arm, bitch," he hissed, letting his pain flow through him and using it to amplify his strength even further while his remaining hand tightened its grip on his lightsaber.

The Jedi was unprepared for the fury of the attack, the rapid switching of forms from Djem So to Ataru to Juyo and back again making defense almost impossible. The flurry of strikes only seemed to increase the longer the Trandoshan attacked, carried forward by the raw power of his emotions. The blade was soon nothing more than a red blur, and it only took a few more seconds of the vicious assault before the Jedi screamed in agony as her left arm was chopped off.

"Difference is, Jedi," Jerissk taunted as he wasted no time in slicing off the wounded warrior's other arm, taking her lightsaber with it, "that mine grow back."

The injured Jedi turned and tried to run, but Jerissk merely snarled in disgust before chopping her head off with a single slash.

"Well, you managed to take one of my arms, I'll give you that much," the Trandoshan said as he knelt over the corpse. "Been a while since someone's done that; been a while since I've gotten that sloppy in a fight. Guess that's my fault for being hasty, though."

Jerissk's words were stilled in his throat as a spasm of pain wracked the stump where his arm had been severed, but he grit his teeth and pushed the pain out of his mind. The cauterizing caused by the lightsaber wound was going to slow the regeneration of the arm considerably, but it would still grow back in time all the same.

Picking up the head to keep as proof of the bounty, Jerissk put it in the pack on his back and began to return towards the brush. He hadn't gotten more than six steps before he felt a Force signature so powerful it almost gave him a headache; the power faded quickly afterwards, as if the owner had decided to conceal it, but the brief slip had been enough.

The Trandoshan knew he had other company, and he had absolutely no desire to be found by them whatsoever.

* * *

"This forest is absolutely enormous," Arina said in awe as she stared up at the massive trunk of a _worshyr_ tree, a natural pillar that stretched for miles and miles upwards. "How are we going to find a single person down here, with all of this landscape to cover?"

"Use your higher senses, my padawan," Bastila answered her student. "While it's true that the Shadowlands are immense, there aren't that many living things down here that possess a great affinity for the Force. If we can pinpoint any abnormalities as far as that's concerned, it should lead us to either our rogue Jedi target, or to the Trandoshan."

"And since finding either of them works to our advantage," Revan completed, "there's no need to be particular about which concentration we go after first. Bastila, have you picked anything up yet?"

"No, but it shouldn't be much longer. I'm sensing a general disturbance in the Force, like an echo; something happened down here not too long ago, and it was most likely a violent encounter."

Arina flinched as her extended awareness picked up the backlash her master had mentioned, throwing her out of her meditative state.

"Someone had a pretty brutal fight over there," the padawan observed. "I can't get much in the way of specifics from this far out, but all I can feel is pain and anger."

Revan sighed, extending his own awareness for a moment and pinpointing the exact location the echo was originating from. It was more difficult than normal due to the biological interference from the crowded forest floor, but far from impossible for the Jedi Master.

"It's about three kilometers to the northeast," he said. "Let's get going, before the wildlife pick up our scents and decide to eat us for dinner."

The Jedi began to move at a steady clip through the forest, fast enough to stay ahead of any potential predators without going so fast as to get careless.

"You watch our backs, my padawan," Bastila spoke over her shoulder to Arina as the trio advanced. "I'll keep an eye out for ambushes from the side, while Revan takes point. I wish Jolee were here; he knows this place better than any of us."

"I'm sure he would be, if he could," Revan replied. "The last place he wants to be is on Dantooine healing up, I can tell you that much."

Arina's eyes widened in disbelief as she imagined the spacey old hermit of a Jedi living in a place like this and surviving on his own. She would have to ask him about that sometime, after this mission was over—

"Wait!" the padawan called out suddenly, her instincts shouting at her in warning of danger. "Stop; something's wrong!"

The two older Jedi slowed to a halt, pausing to get a feel for the immediate vicinity. After a few tense moments, Revan and Bastila shared a glance and shook their heads.

"This area seems fine to me, my padawan," Bastila said. "Perhaps you were sensing something further on up ahead?"

Part of Arina wanted to argue the point, but when she tried to feel for the danger again, she came up empty.

"The site's only a little further on up this way," Revan said encouragingly. "Let's go."

The Master started moving again, ahead of Arina and her master. But he hadn't gotten further than a few yards away before a loud chirping sound broke out in the clearing.

"What the—birds?" Arina said, confused. "I don't remember seeing any nests on the way over here, master."

But as the chirping rose in frequency and pitch, Bastila realized with horrifying clarity just what it was, and what her padawan had been disturbed by just moments ago.

"Revan," she shouted, "Someone placed thermal detonators at the base of this _wroshyr_ trunk! Get back here—!"

But the Knight's warning was in vain, a thunderous _boom_ sounding out in the still forest as the explosives cracked the trunk and sent the whole massive sapling careening over onto its side. It landed in between Revan and his comrades, splitting the group in two.

"Revan!" Bastila shouted, her heart pounding in her chest as she feared the worst. "Are you all right?"

The silence fell back over the Shadowlands in the wake of the crash, holding for several tense moments before Revan's voice was heard, faintly, from the other side of the massive barrier.

"I'm fine, Bastila," he called out. "I managed to dodge it. Listen, I'm changing up the plan a bit. I'll go on ahead to the incident site; you two find a way either around or through this thing and rendezvous with me afterward."

"Why are you risking going ahead alone, master?" Arina asked, her voice panicked. "Just hang on a minute, and we'll slice through this thing together!"

"No, Arina; listen to me," Revan replied insistently. "That was a trap, there's no doubting it. And Jerissk, assuming he set it, definitely heard it go off. If we waste time here, he's going to escape… or worse, use that time to get the drop on us. I have to go ahead and cut him off now, before we lose the advantage completely. Come and back me up when you've figured out a way past this trunk. You'll know where to find me."

The Jedi Master turned and continued on at a run, zeroing in on the battle site and no longer caring about being discovered. If Jerissk wanted to find him, they were going to cross paths soon enough. And if the Trandoshan's goal was to escape, there was no point in taking his time. Revan sped through and over a few tangles of brush before finally leaping into the targeted clearing, lightsaber already ignited as he landed on the ground. He had hoped to find Jerissk here, but the only things that met the Jedi's eyes were corpses.

Six Wookies lay butchered on the ground, their wounds carved by the swift, precise arc of a lightsaber's blade. Not one extraneous cut; the mark of a master swordsman. Revan's thoughts were interrupted as he caught sight of another corpse, this one decidedly human. Hastening over to its side, the Master looked down and saw the lacerated body of what had once been a Jedi, judging by the severed arm holding a lightsaber and the faint aura of the Force that still clung to the corpse. The head was gone, most likely a trophy of the hunt.

Revan's eyes widened as he saw a reptilian arm on the ground, before they narrowed again intently. It seemed as though Jerissk hadn't quite survived this fight unscathed himself, either.

"Well, then," the Jedi Master mused calmly, retracting his lightsaber and studying the faint Force aura lingering on the arm, memorizing its characteristics before turning away and heading deeper into the Shadowlands.

"Let's see how much you've grown, Jerissk."

* * *

.......

.........

**A/N: **And so the plot thickens! Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and the next couple of installments promise to be intense indeed, as the Jedi struggle in the Shadowlands and come face-to-face with their enemy. As always, **please review** if you would be so kind; favorites and alerts are appreciated, but hearing from you guys is a buzz on a whole different level. Motivation galore to keep writing, they are.

Also, big thanks go out once again to master beta and generally awesome dude **JasoTheArtisan** for helping make this chapter much better than it would have been otherwise. I feel like I need to thank him for coming up with Jerissk's name for me, as well -- it was rough trying to think of a good name for a Trandoshan, and he hit it out of the park. Props.


	4. Hunt

**Legacies**

**Chapter 4: **Hunt

* * *

The silence of the Shadowlands held for only a few seconds, before it was broken by the sound of Arina's sullen voice.

"This is my fault," she said heavily, placing her hand against the huge, ancient trunk and feeling the strength of its natural barrier. "If I'd noticed that trap sooner, it could have been avoided. Now we're split up, and we still have no idea where the enemy is. This couldn't have gone any worse."

"Do not give into your despair, my padawan," Bastila said calmly, sinking to her knees in a meditative position and closing her eyes. "Look to the Force, and it will guide you. This is hardly an inescapable problem."

"So, what would you suggest, then, master?" Arina asked doubtfully, still not sharing the other Jedi's optimism. Bastila opened her eyes and took a careful look at their surroundings. She remained quiet for some moments, before nodding and pointing to a path leading to the northwest.

"We'll take this way," the Knight declared. "That path should curve and join with the one Revan took. We'll meet up with him, and reinforce him if he needs it. But be sure not to do anything too noticeable along the way, Arina… if we get surprised by this assassin, it could very well be the end of us."

"Understood," the padawan answered with a firm nod, her earlier frustration completely vanished from her expression. If this threat was serious enough that Bastila was on alert, it would be a shameful lack of form for Arina not to be as well.

"Remember that he can hide himself completely from detection," the Knight cautioned as the pair began to move down their chosen path. "If you feel anything even close to a disturbance in the Force again, act on it. You did well in noticing that earlier ripple; it was my inattentiveness that was to blame for not finding it as well."

Arina nodded humbly, feeling even more ashamed that her master was shouldering the blame when the blunder had clearly been hers. But Arina shook herself sharply out of her introspection, focusing once again on the forest around her. She had to focus keenly on the present now, because her life did depend on it.

"Strange, though, that the trap was designed to split us up," Bastila mused quietly. "A cluster of the bombs all in one place would have been more effective, I'd think. Perhaps our enemy doesn't want us dead, after all. Maybe he's after something else."

"That could be," Arina answered, "but all the same, we should assume the worst, to be prepared for it if it co—" the padawan's words were stopped in her throat by a sharp jolt from her instincts that something dangerous was swiftly approaching. A rustle in the dense growth to the left confirmed Arina's suspicions, and she ignited her lightsaber instantly.

"Master, look out!"

Bastila had clearly sensed it as well, because her own lightsaber blazed to life in a split second and struck with deadly accuracy at the full-grown bull Katarn that sprung out at her. Arina, who had been about to lunge forward at the beast her master had just felled, dug her feet into the soft earth to stop herself and turned sharply. Raising one hand and focusing, she blasted a smaller Katarn into a nearby tree with a quick and concussive Force push.

The commotion quickly drew the other Katarn of the hunting pack out into the open to see what had happened to their comrades, turning the minor skirmish into an entrenched battle between the two Jedi and several enraged predators.

"Damn it," Bastila cursed, wondering if this was another trap laid by Jerissk or just an unlucky coincidence. The Knight had no doubt that she would be more than capable of handling her share of the fight, but she was deeply concerned about her padawan. Arina had trouble holding her own in a sparring match, to say nothing of fighting animals with no concept of restraint and an overriding instinct to kill anything that moved.

Bastila felt the urge to tap into her fear and anger, knowing the power that lay within the primal emotions.

_It's fine,_ her mind tried to rationalize. _Using this power to protect someone isn't evil._

But the Knight quickly calmed down and cleared her head, completely banishing any thoughts of the Dark Side. Her time as Malak's apprentice had been another life as far as Bastila was concerned, a life that had been buried along with the Sith Lord and his Star Forge. Redoubling her zeal, she turned her emotions into cold focus and continued to slash through the ranks of Katarn, moving with such liquid grace that it seemed the fight was taking no toll on her at all.

Arina, however, was having a much harder time of things.

She had committed the elementary mistake of advancing too hastily on the downed Katarn she'd hurled into the tree in order to land a finishing blow. The padawan had succeeded in downing one enemy, but in exchange had allowed two more to flank her unopposed. A quick leap to the side saved her from being bisected by a vicious claw swipe, the deep grooves left in the thick tree-trunk only serving to remind Arina how close to death she'd just come.

The Katarn continued to advance fearlessly, sensing with certainty that the lightsaber being brandished at them was in the hands of someone incapable of harnessing its real power. The two animals were joined by two more, doubling the padawan's number of assailants and chopping her odds of survival in half. Her hands began to shake, Arina's green eyes widening in fear as her breath quickened into the shallow, panicked intakes of a body preparing itself to run far away as fast as it possibly could.

There was no way she could handle this. She was going to die here.

One of the Katarn smelled its prey's hesitancy and struck, lunging with a hiss and swiping out harshly with its claws. Arina threw herself back as quickly as her muscles could react, but it wasn't fast enough to keep the talons from grazing her chest deeply enough to draw blood. Three horizontal scars were left across her abdomen, wounds that were soon red with blood as it seeped to the surface. The sight spurred the other three Katarn into action, and Arina felt her limbs become paralyzed with fear as the pain in her midsection threatened to undo her focus completely. The padawan looked over imploringly at her teacher, but Bastila was too occupied in her own fight to break off and aid her student, for fear that such an action would only draw more enemies toward Arina.

_I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die,_ the padawan repeated again and again in her head, a mantra vainly trying to stave off the shock that came shortly before the darkness of death. What could she possibly do to get out of this alive? Closing her eyes, Arina dove deep into her memories to scrounge up what she could remember of Rhion's teachings.

_If you ever find yourself surrounded, and with no possibility of aid,_ the Echani's gentle voice filtered through the haze of her fear, _there is but one thing you can do. One option left to you, and one alone. _

_Surrender yourself completely to your emotions. Let them raise you up and carry you to victory. It is a great risk to take, and you may lose yourself for a moment, but I believe you are strong enough to find your way back from such darkness, Arina._

The padawan felt her fear beckoning to her, a black lake swirling in the depths of her soul. It roiled with anger and hate and cowardice and self-loathing and base instinct, hinting at seemingly limitless power. Arina stepped to the edge of the maelstrom, feeling its intent to drag her down and swallow her whole, corrupting her being from the inside out. But there was no other choice, not this time. Better to be alive and tainted than pure and dead.

She walked into the dark water, and it welcomed her with open arms.

Bastila felt a surge of power from off to her left and froze, terror spiking in her gut as it seemed that the Knight's worst fear had been realized. Quickly striking down the last of the Katarn before her, Bastila heard a furious shout come from her padawan and turned to behold a sight she'd hoped never to see.

Arina was attacking the Katarn that had surrounded her with a ferocity she'd never shown before, the green blade of her lightsaber little more than a blur as she hacked through the flesh of her enemies like a born berserker. The Katarn knew the fight had shifted to flow against them, but it was too late to escape. The padawan roared and charged, slicing down her fleeing foes despite the fact that their backs were showing. Her vindictive joy clearly evident in the blunt, brutal blows of Arina's lightsaber: there was no elegance to her form, no control. There was only anger and hatred and bloodlust, the desire to destroy all who opposed her.

Her padawan had embraced the Dark Side, and Bastila had been powerless to prevent it.

As the last Katarn fell dead with a pathetic mewling whimper, Arina's rage found itself still seething and unsatisfied, craving a new target. And as the padawan turned to face her master, it found one. But Bastila had prepared herself for the attack, and retracted one blade of her lightsaber in order to focus all of her strength into the block. The force of Arina's strike was much stronger than what the Knight had been expecting, but its rawness still left it weak enough to be blocked and deflected. Realizing that she had no time to fight a protracted battle, Bastila stunned her padawan with a quick jab of her lightsaber's hilt to the wounded area of Arina's gut. The teacher then froze her student in Stasis as she reeled back, halting her completely.

Seeing the wild fear and anger still smoldering in the young padawan's eyes, Bastila felt a piercing surge of regret. Why hadn't she been fast enough to come to Arina's aid? She knew better than most that a fall to the Dark Side was much easier after the first brush with it, but in the end Bastila had been unable to keep her padawan from opening that gate.

Stepping forward, Bastila placed her hand on Arina's forehead and reached into her mind with the Force, quickly locating the font of anger and quelling it with a sharp shock. Stepping back into her own mind, the Jedi was pleased to see the cloud gone from her padawan's eyes. But they soon became hazy again, this time with sadness and guilt rather than rage.

"Master, I—" she started, retracting her lightsaber. "I'm sorry, I didn't—"

Bastila stepped forward and cut off her student's words with an embrace. The gesture of acceptance caused Arina's guilt to overwhelm her completely as she wept into her master's shoulder, horrified by what she had done, and what she might have done.

"It's okay," Bastila said comfortingly, feeling her shoulder growing warm. "I don't blame you; you did what you had to do to survive, and no one can hold that against you. Just promise me that you'll never let your emotions control you like that again, my padawan… they can give you great power for a moment, but to hold onto them for any longer than that is incredibly dangerous."

She felt Arina nod shortly and back up, her composure returning to her expression with practiced swiftness. A few moments later, the only sign she'd broken down at all was a slight redness around her eyes.

"Now come on," Bastila encouraged, "we need to keep moving. For all we know, Revan's already got his hands full with the Trandoshan."

* * *

Revan could feel Jerissk's presence on the very edge of his perception, as if it was shrouded by a thick and unnatural fog. It made sense that he would want to stay hidden with a wound as grievous as his, but that didn't make it any less annoying to deal with. He had to think of some way to draw the Trandoshan out, before Jerrisk got the drop on him.

The snap of a branch underfoot to the Jedi's right was all it took for a burst of Force Lightning to turn the nearby foliage to ashes, but the attack yielded nothing in the end.

"Wow, Force Lightning from a Jedi?" a dryly incredulous voice spoke out from all around Revan. "Haven't seen that before. Do the other members of the Council know you're still holding that up your sleeve, Revan?"

The voice sounded exactly like a younger version of Arnok's, leaving no doubt in Revan's mind as to the identity of his opponent. Extending his senses through the Force, the Jedi searched for the source of the voice…

And almost lost his head because of it. Jerissk darted out of the dense growth with deadly speed, lightsaber ignited and gripped in his good remaining hand. Revan barely had enough time to move his own lightsaber block the strike, coming face-to-face with the son of his former Blademaster at last.

But as soon as Jerissk had struck he was gone, leaping away with the burst of speed used by all Ataru masters in their acrobatic lightsaber maneuvers. His Force trail bled off into the distance once more, and Revan was left with no choice but to follow where it led. The Jedi knew that course of action put him at a marked disadvantage, though, and he kept his senses sharp for any opportunity to turn the pursuit around.

"And while you're looking left, Revan," Jerissk's voice called out in an unnervingly accurate taunt, "I'll be going right."

The Trandoshan dropped out of the Jedi's senses completely for a moment, and by the time Revan realized Jerissk was behind him, the Trandoshan was about to land a diving Juyo skull-splitter right between the Jedi's eyes. Revan spun and blocked again, but this time he was fast enough to send a powerful Force push into Jerissk's gut before the one-armed warrior could retreat. Jerissk flew backward, but was able to plant his lightsaber into the soft earth and use it as a stabilizer, killing his momentum with a hard half-spin and getting back up to his feet.

Revan wasn't about to give his enemy a chance to regain his balance, though, and he was ready to meet Jerissk with a powerful forward slash as soon as the Trandoshan's feet had hit the ground. The former Blademaster wrenched his lightsaber from the ground and brought it forward to block the strike, his heels digging into the earth as he was pushed back by the pressure of Revan's attack.

"What're you doing all the way out here, Jerissk?" the Jedi asked tersely, surprised by the amount of resistance the Trandoshan was putting up despite being tired from a previous duel and only having one arm. "There's no reason for a Sith assassin like you to be in a place as remote as this."

"I'm not working for the Sith anymore, Revan," Jerissk shot back, breaking the deadlock with a shove and beginning an exchange of slashes with the Jedi Master. "I broke off from them a while ago. Now I just look out for myself; nothing and no-one else."

"Then why go out of your way to kill a Jedi?" Revan pressed, feeling the Trandoshan's guard crack but not wanting to kill him. He had to figure out what those visions had been trying to tell him, and the Master felt that talking to Jerissk was the only way for that to happen. The Trandoshan chuckled, reversing the grip on his lightsaber and slashing out hard to put Revan back on the defensive.

"You and I both know Jedi have a habit of pissing off very powerful people in their line of work, Revan," Jerissk answered. "That bitch had a bounty on her head high enough to feed me for months, and I couldn't pass that up."

The former Blademaster felt his back heel press up against a tree-trunk and he smiled; he finally had Revan where he needed him. Leaping to the side, Jerissk threw his lightsaber up with unerring accuracy and controlled the blade's movement with the Force, slicing through a thick _wroshyr_ branch and sending it plummeting right down over Revan's head. The Jedi had to divert his attention fully to stopping the branch from crushing him, and by the time he'd moved it out of the way, Jerissk was nowhere to be seen.

But Revan could still feel him, and the Trandoshan was back on the move once again. The Jedi followed, wondering what angle Jerissk could possibly be playing by sticking so doggedly to hit-and-runs rather than mounting a full-on attack. Even if the odds of the former Blademaster winning such a confrontation were decidedly slim, they were still better than the odds of him outlasting Revan in a contest of endurance. And even if Trandoshans were gifted with exceptional stamina, Jerissk was too strung out to put up a fight for much longer; the Jedi had been able to glean at least that much from their brief clash.

Revan was thrown out of his thoughts by the sound of movement to his left, which was answered by a sharp volley of Lightning. But no sooner had the last spark evaporated from the Jedi's fingertips than Jerissk rushed at him from the right, lined up right in Revan's blind-spot. A quick dodge was the Jedi's only recourse, and by the time he'd re-focused himself, Jerissk was gone again.

"How many times are you going to fall for the same trick, Revan?" the Trandoshan asked with an undercurrent of annoyance in his voice. "Something tells me you're not trying to beat me."

"And you are, Jerissk?" Revan countered. "I've been open several times now, and not once have you actually tried to hold a sustained attack against me. Why aren't you?"

The Trandoshan just gave a thin, hissing chuckle at the question.

"Because I'm not stupid, Revan," he answered. "I can't go head-to-head with you, not in this condition. And especially not if you decide to stop screwing around and start taking this seriously. Why aren't you?"

The Jedi fell silent at the question, understanding that the only thing pointless verbal warfare accomplished was getting closer to whatever goal Jerissk was trying to reach. Even if he was trying not to kill his opponent, Revan still knew several ways to incapacitate a target without being lethal. Calming himself and focusing the Force around him, the Jedi cast a wide net of Stasis in a bubble radiating outwards. He was certain that he would ensnare the Trandoshan within the paralyzing field, and finally put an end to this irritating chase.

Jerissk could feel the attack spreading out towards him and snarled out a curse. He had expected to be hit with a counter-attack, but not one of this magnitude. Fortunately for the Trandoshan, though, he was almost at his destination. If he could outrun this Statis Field for just a few more moments, he could pull this off. Reaching back into the pack slung around his good shoulder, Jerissk felt around impatiently for the rest of his thermal detonators. He was throwing away a lot of money dealing with these three Jedi, but the bounty on the head he was carrying with him would make it all worth it.

If he made it out of the forest alive, of course.

Jerissk withdrew the trio of bombs and used the Force to push down their triggers, arming them while he continued to run along the large branch he had chosen as his path. As soon as the hunter had passed a particularly large tree to his left, he chucked the trio of detonators down at its base and kept on running. A few seconds later the loud _boom_ of an explosion and the concussive force that followed it almost knocked Jerissk over, but the Trandoshan dug his taloned feet deep into the bark and held firm. The tree itself fell exactly where Jerissk had planned it to, setting up a large, strong barrier between himself and Revan.

Now, he would be able to take care of the other two without worrying about watching his back. Continuing onwards, the warrior focused in on the Force trails of the two Jedi ahead of him and prepared himself to attack.

The sound of the large _wroshyr_ tree falling didn't fail to cause quite a ruckus, as several animals scurried away from the crash site and off into deeper, undisturbed parts of the forest. But the native fauna weren't the only ones disturbed by the clamor; Bastila and Arina stopped cold in their tracks, trying to figure out what could have possibly made such a noise.

"That sounded like it came from ahead of us," Arina said after a few moments, confused, "but that makes no sense. If we were going ahead to loop around and meet Revan, why would someone be coming from ahead of us?"

Bastila held her hand up clenched into a fist, a silent signal to her padawan to stay silent. As her master closed her eyes and focused, Arina got the hint and did the same. The two Jedi extended their awareness as much as they could through the Force, searching their surroundings for anything abnormal.

It wasn't long before Arina found it. It was little more than a ripple on the edge of her mind, but it was concrete enough to manifest as a disturbance all the same. A quick glance at her master told Arina that Bastila had felt it too, and both Jedi ignited their lightsabers without another word. It was a precaution that paid off almost immediately, as both of them lashed out simultaneously heartbeats later and each sliced a falling fragmentation grenade in half. The bombs hit the ground with nothing more than impotent fizzles. But Bastila's momentary distraction by relief and Arina's excitement at success blinded both of them to the third bomb that fell into the space between them, blazing white-hot and detonating as soon as it hit the ground.

The screeching sound of the concussion grenade was designed to be deafening, and Bastila had heard the residuals of it many times in battle. But that second-hand exposure was nothing compared to taking a direct hit from one. The Knight's world went white, her lightsaber slipping from her grasp as her hands flew instinctively to her ringing ears. Arina's scream was faint as it came through the haze of Bastila's own disorientation, but she knew her padawan was in as bad a state as she was.

Taking deep breaths and forcing her body to calm down, the Knight blinked a few times as her blurry vision finally began to clear, the ringing in her ears subsiding to a dull but manageable buzz. As she reached down for her lightsaber, though, Bastila felt a powerful surge of the Force above her and turned to face it. Her eyes focused at once on the blazing glow of the red lightsaber blade bearing down on her, descending too fast to be blocked. Bastila recognized the wielder as a Trandoshan: no doubt, this was Jerissk. Sighing inwardly at her inevitable defeat and closing her eyes, Bastila only hoped that her apprentice would be spared her fate.

But the deathblow never came. Opening her eyes slowly, the Knight saw that a blue lightsaber blade had appeared to block the red one, stopping the strike inches from Bastila's face. Shifting her eyes over, Bastila felt gratitude surge up within her as she saw Revan standing beside her, his eyes filled with an intensity she hadn't seen in a long time.

"I don't fall for the same trick twice, Jerissk," the Master said lowly, shoving back hard against the Trandoshan's lightsaber and breaking the deadlock. The unexpected defense forced his enemy to retreat back a few paces, and Revan was quick to trap Jerissk in a Statis hold. Turning his attention to the two Jedi, Revan sent out a burst of healing energy through the Force to Bastila and Arina. It succeeded in shaking off the effects of the concussion grenade completely, and patching up their wounds from the previous battle with the Katarns.

"Are you two all right?" he asked Bastila, and the Knight nodded.

"Thanks to you, yes," she answered. "I can't believe I let him surprise me like that."

"Don't be hard on yourself," Revan replied gently. "Jerissk was trained to be a peerless assassin. I'm just sorry it took me so long to find you, princess."

"I wouldn't worry about me," Bastila countered. "I'm much more concerned about—" the Knight's words stalled as she turned around, feeling that same foreboding aura from earlier beginning to gather around her padawan like a fog.

"Arina?" Bastila said slowly, becoming more and more worried as her padawan's grip clenched tighter and tighter around her lightsaber's hilt, her green eyes widening in shock before slowly narrowing into murderous slits as they stared ahead at the paralyzed Trandoshan. "Are you all right?"

Arina was motionless for a few more seconds, before the rage that had been building up within her reached the breaking point and boiled over.

"_You!"_

The word burst out of the padawan's mouth halfway between a snarl and a roar, and she sprinted forward with Force-augmented speed that surprised both Bastila and Revan. Arina's green lightsaber blade was at Jerissk's throat before either of the other Jedi had time to react, the killing intent in the padawan's heart unmistakable.

Arina stared hard at her enemy, seeing in the Trandoshan's eyes that he remembered exactly who she was. Not wasting another moment, the padawan brought her lightsaber back over her head and slashed it down as hard as she could, further enraged by the defiant look her enemy gave her as the blade descended.

* * *

....

.......

**A/N:** Oh no, it's a cliffhanger! Don't worry, though; it'll be resolved next chapter, when the mission on Kashyyyk comes to its conclusion.

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and **please review** if you would be so kind; it's awesome to see those drop into the inbox. Big thanks must also go out once again to **JasoTheArtisan** for being an awesome beta, and assisting tremendously in making this story much better than it would otherwise be.


	5. Scars

**Legacies**

**Chapter 5: **Scars

* * *

Arina could almost hear the singeing sound that would come as she cleaved Jerissk's body in two, the weak hiss of a death rattle that would pass from his lips as the reptilian assassin passed on from this world. A thrill sang in her blood: she was so close, so close to avenging her old master, the one she had been powerless to defend—

But just before her strike landed, the padawan was thrown aside by a brutally raw and powerful Force push, one that sent her flying into a nearby tree. She was knocked into unconsciousness by the impact, her lightsaber retracting as soon as it left her hand.

"Revan," Bastila exclaimed, "what are you doing?"

"Keeping your padawan from committing murder," the Jedi Master replied evenly, moving back into a neutral posture. "Relax, she's just unconscious."

The Knight hastened over to her student's side, leaving Revan to confront Jerissk himself. Walking over to the son of his former General, the Jedi Master took the lightsaber at the Trandoshan's hip and placed it into the empty holster next to his own.

"I'm going to release you," Revan said seriously. "Try anything even remotely aggressive, though, and I might let Arina finish what she started. Am I understood?"

Jerissk nodded with his eyes, and Revan relaxed the Stasis with a wave of his hand. The former Blademaster regarded the Jedi Master warily, unsure what his next move would be.

"The Jedi don't kill their prisoners," the Trandoshan said evenly. "So where does that leave us?"

"For now, you're still our prisoner," Revan answered. "And it's going to stay that way until we reach the _Ebon Hawk_. By then, I'll have figured out just what to do with you, Jerissk, son of Arnok."

Jerissk made no reply, a cocky smile on his face that told Revan his captive wasn't going to be very cooperative. Giving up on getting anything out of him for now, the Jedi Master turned his attention back to Bastila.

"Let's get going back to the lift," he called out. "I don't want to stay down here any longer than we need to."

"Of course," the Knight agreed with a nod, carrying her unconscious padawan on her back as she rejoined Revan and Jerissk. "What are we going to do with _him_?"

"He's coming with us back to Dantooine," the Master said, as he began to lead the way back towards the basket that would take them back up to the village. "There are a lot of questions I need him to answer. And if Jerissk won't open up to me, I know a few people back at the Enclave who would be more than happy to interrogate him."

_He honestly thinks I haven't been trained to resist Jedi mind tricks?_ The Trandoshan thought scornfully. _They're going to get nothing out of me except what I want them to hear._

"Not very likely," Bastila replied evenly. "If he's been trained as a Sith, odds are he's been taught how to resist being interrogated. Even by someone as powerful as a Jedi Master."

_Well, at least she's smarter than she looks._

"I thought about that," the Jedi Master answered with a smirk in his voice. "Even a trained soldier would have trouble resisting two or more Masters working in concert, and there're five of us on Dantooine."

Jerissk held his silence, but a tense twitch in his clenched jaw was enough to tell Revan that he'd hit a nerve. The group continued on in silence, until Bastila's curiosity overcame her and she spoke.

"You seem fairly relaxed considering the circumstances," the Knight said. "Shouldn't we be on guard for more Sith to show up?"

Revan shook his head negatively as he stepped into the basket, waiting for everyone else to join him before pulling the lever and beginning the ascent.

"Just keep one hand by your lightsaber," he answered calmly. "Doing anything too noticeable is just going to draw them to us faster. We're the only Force-sensitive ones down here, after all. But stay sharp regardless; even if Jerissk told me he'd left the Sith behind, he could have been lying."

Jerissk wanted to retort, but he stayed silent in the end. He knew he was being baited, and refused to take it. While he held his tongue, he held an advantage. And an advantage like this was something he couldn't afford to lose in the company he was currently keeping.

_Lying? _The Trandoshan spat to himself. _You have no idea what you're talking about, Revan. No one walks away willingly from what I had back on Korriban. I was forced out._

"But then that leaves us with a different problem, doesn't it?" Bastila said pointedly. "If we take Jerissk with us to Dantooine, won't that just be calling the Sith to us?"

Revan smiled at the question, a look coming into his eyes that told Bastila she was not going to like his response at all.

"That's part of the plan," the Master said, his smile twisting slightly into something approaching a smirk. "My hope is that we can get a sense of where the Sith are lurking now, based on how they move to come after Jerissk."

The Trandoshan was surprised by that, not expecting a Jedi to do something so bold and fundamentally ruthless. Using a hostage as bait to draw the Jedi's enemies out of hiding… perhaps there was more Sith left in the former Dark Lord than he cared to admit.

_I'll act as a lure if it keeps me from getting mind-wiped,_ Jerissk thought, _but if they think they can hold off the hunters that will be coming after me, those Jedi are insane. The Sith Order breaking apart after Malak didn't weaken it; it just left the strongest, most vicious bastards as the only ones standing._

"And you think we can hold them off?" Bastila pressed. "I know Dantooine's Enclave has a whole Council of Masters, but it also has students: younglings and other non-combatants. Would you really risk putting all of them in danger?"

Jerissk had to smile at the question, his sharp teeth glinting in the increasing moonlight as the basket rose ever upwards. That compassion was the reason why the Jedi would always fall, and the Sith would rise. Having nothing to protect meant having nothing to lose, and that freedom gave the wielders of the Dark Side incredible strength.

"I'm asking you to trust me on this, Bastila," Revan countered seriously. "Yes, it's a big risk, and I'm aware of that. But it's the only way we can face the Sith on our own terms; going to Korriban would be suicidal. Their power isn't something you can just hope to overcome. It takes people like you and me, who really understand that darkness, to be able to defeat it. Everyone who hasn't been tainted by it will be kept far, far away from whoever decides to come after us.

"So just have some faith, and don't worry about it."

Jerissk felt Revan's anger and guilt roiling just underneath the surface of his calm expression, and wondered how he managed to keep himself under control. The Dark Side's call was powerful indeed, especially to someone who had answered it once before; it seemed as though all it would take was one firm shove, and the former Dark Lord could be persuaded to take his old mantle up again.

_Now _that_ would be something I'd love to see, _Jerissk mused. _I wonder if the Council of Ten would be able to stand up to Revan, if he tried to reclaim his position as the sole leader of the Sith. And even if they did defeat him, Revan could probably take down at least half of them before that happened… then the Jedi could move in and take care of the rest themselves._

The Trandoshan's eyes widened as his train of thought carried through to its logical conclusion. Jerissk wondered if Revan would be willing and able to sacrifice so much of himself just to destroy what was left of the Sith… and looking at the Jedi's expression, there was little doubt in the bounty hunter's mind that he would.

Bastila opened her mouth to reply, but the basket lurched to a halt and cut her words off before they could be voiced.

"Let's go," Revan said shortly, beginning to go down the walkway that led back to the _Ebon Hawk_. "The sooner we get back to Dantooine, the better."

Jerissk and Bastila followed in his wake, but there was a look in the Knight's eyes telling Revan in no uncertain terms that she would have her say in the end. A group of Wookies saw the wounded, guarded Trandoshan and bellowed out a hostile threat, but a single hard look from Jerissk was enough to compel the warriors to break off their unspoken challenge and look away. The brief contest of wills decided, the Wookies walked down the rest of the path in silence.

A few moments later, the crew had made it back up the boarding ramp and into the _Ebon Hawk_. The engines flared brightly shortly afterward as the ship hovered over the landing pad flying up and off into the night, breaking orbit and heading out back into the darkness of space.

* * *

Bastila wasted no time in carrying Arina's still-unconscious form to the room of the _Hawk_ that had used to be hers during the war against Malak. After laying her padawan down gently on the cot, the Knight sank into a nearby chair and leaned her head back against the wall, closing her eyes against the torrent of thoughts pounding away at her serenity.

Not only had she almost failed to prevent her own student's fall to the Dark Side, she'd failed outright to convince Revan not to bring that Trandoshan Sith back to Dantooine. Bastila had assumed that her lover would at least consider her opinions at this point, but he'd been surprisingly dismissive of her instead. For a moment, the lingering fear rose up in the back of Bastila's mind that Revan's Sith persona was reasserting itself, but the Jedi quickly squashed it. After everything he'd done for the Light, and everything the two of them had shared, there was no way Revan would fall again.

But the doubt remained nonetheless, a splinter that continued to ache.

The sudden sound of a sharp, gasping breath jolted Bastila out of her thoughts. Arina had finally woken up, and the padawan had a panicked look in her eyes as they glanced frantically around the room.

"What happened?" she breathed out as Bastila moved over to her side. "Where are we? Where's the Trandoshan?"

"Easy; easy," the Knight said gently as she gripped her padawan's shoulders and lowered her back down onto the cot. "We're back on the _Ebon Hawk_. Revan knocked you out after you tried to attack Jerissk."

Arina grimaced and groaned as her body began to catch up with her, a dull pain pounding at the front of her skull.

"Where's Jerissk now?" the padawan forced out through her discomfort. "Did you and Revan kill him, master?"

"What?" Bastila asked, her eyebrows rising slightly in surprise at the question. "Of course we didn't. You know the Jedi policy towards handling prisoners, my padawan."

Arina was silent for several moments, her eyes shut hard and jaw clenched as she clearly struggled to get her emotions under control. In the end, though, she failed, and a single question forced its way past her teeth in a strained hiss.

"Why didn't you kill him?" she asked, the corners of her eyes beginning to burn as the padawan held herself to the edge of tears. "Why didn't you let _me_ kill him? I was so close!"

"Killing defenseless enemies is not the way of us Jedi, and you know that," Bastila replied, her tone mildly incredulous at having to repeat such a basic tenant of the Jedi philosophy. "It's the first major step towards the Dark Side of the Force, and that's not an easy place to come back from."

Arina felt shame knot in the pit of her stomach as she remembered her earlier attack on her master, but it was quickly overwhelmed and crushed underneath the anger she felt at being denied the revenge she'd wanted for so long.

"I don't care!" she half-shouted, before deflating again with a sigh. "You don't understand what that bastard took from me, master," Arina continued, her voice flat and empty, as if her shout had sapped all of her strength. "He's the one who murdered Rhion. I remember now; I remembered it all as soon as I saw him. It all came rushing back to me. That Trandoshan is the one who killed my old master, and he deserves to die for it."

The chilling certainty in her student's words made Bastila incredibly uneasy; it reminded her far too much of the way she had sounded during her brief time as Malak's Sith apprentice.

"I can understand how seeing someone who wronged you so greatly would make you feel," the Knight said, choosing her words very carefully, "but if you were to have struck him down in hatred, or in anger, you would have been embracing the very Sith ideology that killed your old master. Once we get back to Dantooine, I am sure Jerissk will be tried for his crimes against the Jedi and sentenced accordingly. That is the justice you should accept."

Arina kept quiet at Bastila's words, her anger slowly reducing from boiling to a controlled simmer. When she spoke again, her voice was no longer flat, but the edge it possessed was one of intense bitterness.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything. You know you don't have to ask for my permission."

"If someone walked up to Master Revan and stabbed him through the heart," Arina said evenly, "and you stood there and watched him die, do you feel like it would be enough to just arrest the person who had killed him?"

Bastila wasn't surprised at the question; to be perfectly honest, she'd known her padawan would ask something like it. Brushing aside her initial reaction, the older Jedi took a breath and shook her head.

"No," she answered. "I wouldn't feel like that was enough. But I would control my emotions anyway, and accept the outcome nonetheless. It's easy to give into your baser impulses. Believe me, I know. But it takes much more strength and will to resist them. The Jedi are peacekeepers first and foremost, my padawan; not avengers. Think about it this way: do you really believe Rhion would have wanted you to avenge him by killing the person who killed him? What if you failed, and wound up dying because of it?"

Arina was silent, and Bastila thought it best to give her some time alone; the answers to questions that personal were best found through meditation and reflection. She had some questions to ask Revan anyway, before the _Ebon Hawk_ made its landing back on Dantooine.

Walking briskly down the hall, the Jedi Knight made her way to the main room of the ship, where Jerissk and Revan were engaged in what seemed to be an incredibly intense staring contest. To a Force-sensitive observer, however, it was plain to see that Revan was trying to break down the Trandoshan prisoner's resistance without resorting to the persuasive techniques of the Dark Side. But Jerissk's will was strong, and the Jedi Master was getting nowhere.

"Revan," Bastila broke in seriously, "we need to talk."

"I'm kind of busy right—"

"_Now._"

The single word was enough to throw Revan out of his concentration, and he looked sharply over at Bastila. What he saw in her eyes made the Jedi pause, though; he could tell something was greatly troubling her.

"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's Arina," Bastila replied, her eyes shifting to glare hard at the Trandoshan across from Revan. "She woke up, and she's furious. I can feel it, how close she is to the Dark Side right now."

"And what do you want me to do about that, exactly?" Revan countered, but his voice was much gentler than it had been only moments ago. He knew how heavily this must have weighed down on Bastila, and he wanted to help her, but he'd been trying to crack his prisoner for a good ten minutes now and nothing had come of it.

"Find out why he killed Arina's old master," the Knight answered. "If we can get that much out of him, maybe we can give my padawan enough of a reason to calm down. Once she knows why the crime was committed, it should be much easier to come to terms with it."

Jerissk chuckled, the first sound he'd made since speaking with Revan back in the Shadowlands.

"_I could tell her,"_ the Trandoshan hissed to the Jedi Master in Dosh, _"but it would probably snap her will completely. You still want to know?"_

Bastila felt anger rising up into her throat at being deliberately excluded from the conversation, her frustration clouding her thoughts and shaping her words for her.

"Don't give me that cryptic bullshit, Trandoshan," she said forcefully. "Start talking!"

"Or what?" Jerissk shot back, totally unmoved. "You're going to tear it out of my head? Shock me with Lightning until I confess? Choke me until I squeal? If you don't want your precious padawan to succumb to the Dark Side, Jedi," the Trandoshan finished scornfully, "you're not setting the best of examples."

Bastila stopped and backed off a few steps, taking in a series of deep breaths and struggling to regain her emotional balance. Looking over to Revan, she saw in his eyes that whatever Jerissk had said hadn't been some terrible revelation, which was an immense relief. For all of the good that came of the bond between a master and their padawan, there were times when it was more of a hindrance than a help. It was far too easy to become emotional when their safety was jeopardized, completely destroying objectivity.

"The way I see it, Jerissk," Revan rejoined, "sooner or later, you're going to talk. The only difference is how much discomfort you get put through before you do. I can promise you I won't push hard if you cooperate, but I can't say the same for the other Masters on Dantooine."

The Trandoshan fell silent once again, but the look in his eyes was unmistakably defiant. Revan sighed, knowing how easy it would be to crush Jerissk's will but fully aware of the price he would pay for taking so much as a single step down the Dark path. Where he went, others followed; it was his greatest gift, and his most damning curse.

"Fine, have it your way," the Jedi said flatly. "But you still have the rest of this trip to change your mind, if you feel so inclined."

Jerissk only stared at his captor mutely, his rust-orange eyes trailing every so often down to the second lightsaber at Revan's waist before rising back up to hold his gaze. The former Sith held his tongue, and didn't say another word for the rest of the trip back to the Jedi Enclave.

* * *

.....

.........

**A/N:**

Well, there you have it; the end of what I've come to refer to as the "Kashyyyk Arc". Starting next chapter is the "Dantooine Arc", which is going to be much slower paced and character-focused. Hopefully I'll be able to keep the updates rolling out at a decent pace, although that very well may change once schoolwork starts getting intense again. But regardless, I'm not abandoning this story. I have sworn it.

Anyhow, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter, and **please review**; they are awesome to read and make me oh so joyful.

Big thanks go out to **NRSG**, **bluefalcon1138** and **Grinja** for their awesomely consistent and consistently awesome reviews so far; you guys are awesome. And to everyone else who's reviewed so far, thank you as well.

And last but most _certainly_ not least, another chapter completed means another round of props given to my ridiculously awesome beta who goes by the name of **JasoTheArtisan**, without whose guidance this story would not be nearly as good.

See you next chapter!


	6. Beginnings

**Legacies**

**Chapter 6: **Beginnings

* * *

The sunrise was just finishing as the _Ebon Hawk_ slowed down for its approach into the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, touching down smoothly at its usual landing spot. The ramp opened slowly, and the four passengers walked out into the pale light. Bastila and Arina walked abreast in front of Revan and Jerissk, at the Trandoshan's request that the person who tried to murder him not be allowed to see his back. Jerissk himself was without his pack, as the only thing it had been holding at this point was a severed head that had started stinking. Over the Trandoshan's protestations that he would lose his bounty, the pack had been incinerated, along with the head it was carrying.

Arina kept to herself, but it was painfully apparent to Bastila that her padawan's fury had only barely subsided. It was going to be a while before she was fit for duty again, and it was Bastila's responsibility as her teacher to guide her back to the Light.

"I radioed the Council before we landed to be ready to receive our report, but I didn't say anything in the way of specifics," Revan spoke up. "I thought Jerissk should be given the chance to speak for himself. Bastila, you and Arina are also welcome to attend. If you have something else more pressing to deal with, though, that's perfectly fine as well."

"If I spend more than five minutes in the same room as him, one of us will wind up limping for a week," Arina said bluntly, and Jerissk chuckled.

"_Care to see whom that would be, Jedi?"_ the Trandoshan hissed in Dosh, and the padawan's frown deepened as she looked back over her shoulder at Jerissk.

"_Don't tempt me,"_ she snapped back in the same tongue, inwardly relishing the look of surprise that crossed the Trandoshan's face at the sound of hearing his native language come from the mouth of a human other than Revan.

"Enough, both of you," Revan broke in firmly, using Basic. "It was a long night, and it's too early in the morning for theatrics."

The two younger warriors fell silent, but the tension between them remained palpable. The group entered the Enclave in silence, all of them grateful for the lack of students roaming the halls that was the gift of Saturday mornings. Arina struggled to keep her emotions balanced, but the thought that the person who had murdered her old master was walking right behind her was too much to take. She wanted to scream at Jerissk, curse him, fight him, tear his throat out and watch his eyes go dim as he died.

But the thing she wanted to do the most was ask him a single, simple question. Why had he left her alive, to wander alone and forgotten on the filthy streets of Nar Shaddaa, when it would have been so much easier to have killed her along with Rhion?

Bastila felt her padawan's anger, doubt and self-loathing as clearly as if it had been her own, and shared a quick look with Revan as they came to the final hallway before the Council's main chamber. Stopping her strides, the Knight reached over and put her hand on Arina's shoulder. The student looked up at her teacher for a moment in confusion, before reading the plain message in Bastila's eyes and sighing.

"I think the two of us are going to have to decline delivering the report with you, Revan," the Knight said. "Please do let us know what develops, though."

"Of course," Revan replied with a small nod, watching for a few moments as Bastila and Arina turned and walked the other way down the hall. No doubt, Bastila had judged her padawan's current state of mind to be a far more pressing matter than recounting the specifics of their mission to the Council.

"Now, tell me why she hasn't defected to the Sith yet?" Jerissk asked, amused. "That one's got more raw emotion in her than most of our best recruits did back on Korriban."

The Jedi Master ignored the question, turning and beginning to walk towards the Council's chambers.

"Let's go," Revan said flatly. "We're already late."

The Trandoshan shrugged and followed the Jedi's lead, walking into the Council room without breaking stride. He stood unmoving before the group of five Masters, completely unfazed by the looks they were giving him. When weighed against the burning wrath of an angry Sith Lord, the stoic, disapproving judgment of a Jedi Master barely even registered.

"Well, Revan," Master Lamar began gruffly, "we asked you to apprehend a rogue human Jedi, and you brought us a Trandoshan who reeks of the Dark Side's taint. Care to enlighten us as to how this happened, and who he is?"

"Jerissk," Revan explained, motioning briefly to the Trandoshan at his side, "was already on Kashyyyk by the time we got there. He was hunting the same Jedi as us, but for reasons completely different from ours. Apparently our target had gotten quite the bounty put on her head, and he was there to collect it."

"And I assume, going by your glaring lack of the Jedi in question," Lamar continued, shifting his gaze over to Jerissk, "that he succeeded in killing the rogue Jedi before you could find either of them and prevent it from happening."

"Yes, Master Lamar," Revan answered with a humble nod, "that is correct."

"Where are Bastila and her padawan?" Master Vandar asked, concern evident in his voice and furrowed brow. "Surely they did not fall in battle on Kashyyyk?"

Revan shook his head. "Nothing like that at all, Master Vandar," he replied. "Arina simply found the mission to be more draining than she had anticipated, and Bastila thought it best to give her counsel."

"But of course," Master Zhar chimed in. "No doubt young Arina was rattled by her first experience of life-or-death combat; almost every padawan is, and overcoming that turbulence is a most crucial step on the path to becoming a Jedi."

Master Lamar cleared his throat, causing silence to be restored to the meeting for a few heartbeats before he broke it again.

"While I am relieved that no harm came to your companions on this mission, Revan," the older Jedi Master said, "you've still failed to answer my first question. Who exactly is this Trandoshan, and what is he doing here?"

"My name is Jerissk, son of Arnok," Jerissk spoke up before Revan could answer, his tone even but carrying an edge of defiance nonetheless. "I was the Sith Blademaster at the Academy on Korriban, before breaking ranks with the Order."

"Arnok?" Master Dorak spoke up, his interest piqued by the name of the legendary Sith warrior. "I have heard several mentions of that name over the years, but the archives have almost no records of him whatsoever. A testament to his skill in assassinations, no doubt."

"And you thought it prudent to bring his spawn here before us, Revan?" Master Lamar pressed pointedly. "As I said earlier, the Dark Side is strong within him. Too strong. He is clearly beyond redemption."

"I would not be so quick to judge, Master Lamar," Master Vandar checked his friend with a small smile. "Indeed, the young one said that he _was_ a Blademaster. Which implies, quite clearly, that he no longer holds the position. And if he has broken away willingly from the Sith, that is quite a promising sign of his potential for redemption. Was not the Dark Side stronger in Revan than in this Trandoshan, and does Revan not stand before us now, having earned with his own deeds the position of Jedi Master?"

Master Lamar begrudgingly conceded the point with his silence, but Jerissk answered Vandar's words with an open scoff.

"I've cut my ties to the Sith," he answered contentiously, "and with the Jedi. I don't want your redemption. All I want is a guarantee that after I get off this rock, none of your Knights come after me."

"You want amnesty, you brat?" Master Lamar countered incredulously, losing his temper slightly at such a show of impertinence. "What makes you think you're in any position to strike a bargain with us?"

Jerissk gave a short laugh at the question before he replied, the bite in his tone replaced by smug self-confidence.

"Because things change, Jedi," the Trandoshan answered, "whether or not you can keep up. What Revan knows about the Sith is dated and useless. What I know, though, would be much more useful to you."

The Jedi Masters were silent for a few moments in thought, but their collective contemplation was broken soon enough by Master Zhar.

"While I will admit that proposal is quite intriguing," the Twi'lek allowed, "you seem to have forgotten that if we wanted to, we could simply read those secrets of yours right from where they rest inside of your mind."

"You can try," Jerissk said. "But I think my reflexes are sharper than yours. Do you really think you could crack my mind before I shut it down cold myself?"

Judging by the reactions in the Master's faces at the words, their implication wasn't lost in the slightest.

"So, you're saying you would choose death over any punishment we might bring to bear against you, Jerissk?" Master Dorak asked, and the Trandoshan nodded decisively.

"In a heartbeat."

The room was quiet at such a determined answer, before Master Vandar chuckled in amusement.

"I must say that I certainly admire such powerful will and determination, especially at your age," the squat Jedi said. "If you are trained properly, they might yet become one of your greatest strengths. However, as you stand now, they are nothing more than weaknesses. Do not delude yourself into thinking you could act faster than the five of us together. Just as we do not kill our prisoners, we're not about to let one commit suicide under our watch.

"That said," Master Vandar finished, his eyes glinting, "I nonetheless accept this proposal of yours, Jerissk—"

"What!?" Master Lamar exclaimed, completely thrown by his old friend's declaration. "Are you serious?"

"— with one condition," Master Vandar said, as if he'd never been cut off. "Just as we are accepting a term from you in exchange for your knowledge, so must you accept a term of ours in exchange for your amnesty."

Jerissk wanted to argue further, but he could clearly tell that behind Vandar's small exterior was the power and wisdom befitting a veteran Jedi Master. It had been enough of a victory to make the deal he had on the Jedi's own home turf, and the Trandoshan wasn't stupid enough to push his luck.

"What's your term?"

Vandar smiled at Jerissk's decision, glad that he'd been right in his judgment of the former Sith's character. Focusing for a moment, he sent out a quick summons through the Force to someone waiting in the west wing of the Enclave before continuing.

"Consent to being trained for the period of one month here on Dantooine as a padawan," the Master said. "If, at the end of that time, you choose to turn your back on the Force all the same, we will not pressure you into remaining here."

Jerissk took a few moments to consider the deal before he nodded. He assumed that after the rigorous training he'd done his whole life as a Sith, listening to a Jedi prattle on for a month would be simple.

"Fine by me," he answered. "But which one of you's doing the training?"

"None of them, kid," a gravelly voice snapped from behind the Trandoshan. Jerissk turned to look back at the doorway to the chamber and saw an old, bald man with dark skin and a white goatee staring back at him with sharp dark eyes.

"You think any of the Masters here have time to waste whipping a punk like you into shape? No sir; that's my job."

"Thank you for coming on such short notice, Jolee, my old friend," Vandar greeted the former Jedi cordially. "I trust your convalescence is going well?"

"Never felt better, Master Vandar," Jolee Bindo answered with a smile, before the look faded as if it had never been when he turned back to Jerissk.

"Well? What are you standing there for?" the old Jedi snapped at his new student. "We have a long day ahead of us, you and I. And by the time it's done, you're gonna wish you were back on Korriban. I promise you that."

The confused Trandoshan looked to Revan for some kind of explanation, but all he got in return was a smirk.

"I'd do what he says, Jerissk," the Master said. "Get off on the wrong foot with Jolee, and he won't ever let you forget it. And don't worry about your lightsaber, either," Revan added, noticing where the Trandoshan's rust-orange eyes were straying. "I'll keep it safe for you during your training. If you want it back by the time you finish, it's all yours."

Jerissk only hesitated for another heartbeat before turning and walking towards the door. After Jolee and his new padawan had left the room, Master Lamar turned to his old friend and spoke.

"What if he decides to leave once the month is up?" he asked Vandar. "Are we really just going to let a potential threat like that go? You heard it yourself, he used to be a Blademaster! That's not something you can just walk away from!"

"Why not?" Revan countered. "I did it. Jerissk might have been a Sith from birth, but they only survive and endure through complete refusal to reflect on what they've done. Once he actually takes time to meditate on his past and his future, Jerissk will come around. I'm sure of it."

"Either way, we should trust in the flow of the Force, as we always have," Dorak suggested. "In time, it will doubtless make its workings clear to us."

* * *

As Arina followed behind her master through the halls of the Enclave, her initial surge of anger finally began to subside. Perhaps it was because Jerissk wasn't nearby any longer, but for whatever reason the padawan felt her emotions slowly returning to equilibrium.

"Feeling any better?" Bastila asked, not turning around, as if she'd read her student's mind.

"Yes, master," Arina answered quietly. "Please forgive my words earlier aboard the _Ebon Hawk_. I wasn't myself."

Bastila sighed, slowing her pace enough so that her padawan caught up to her before turning to face her, the Knight's eyes concerned and kind.

"No, don't be ridiculous," she said. "You _were_ being yourself, and denying it will just make the problem worse. I can't imagine the pain you must have felt back there. I sensed some of it while we talked, but that kind of resonance is always insignificant compared to the emotion's real strength. Attempting to bottle up that kind of anger and pain will only harm you in the long run. You have to come to terms with it, or it will consume you. Ah," Bastila finished abruptly as she stopped in front of a nondescript dormitory door. "Here we are. My own little sanctuary, such as it is."

The Knight punched a short sequence of numbers into the numerical pad on the door and it opened with a hiss. The room itself was spartan but nonetheless welcoming, lit warmly by the sunlight filtering through a pair of windows.

"Go on, make yourself at home," Bastila encouraged, taking a seat at the room's lone desk. "We won't be interrupted in here, and I'm not sure I could say the same for the meditation quarters."

Arina walked over to the bed and sat down on it, taking a few moments to look around. Her eyes wandered from the holographic image on Bastila's desk of two people smiling and laughing happily, over to the Cross of Glory resting proudly in a case on her dresser. But the objects that caught Arina's attention most of all were a pair of black robes and a red lightsaber crystal positioned up on the wall, mounted behind glass. Just looking at them made a part of her feel cold, unlike the warmth she'd felt looking at the hologram.

"Master," she asked, "are those…?" She trailed off, unwilling to complete the thought.

"The robes and lightsaber crystal of a Dark Jedi, yes," Bastila finished with a nod. "At one time, they were mine. And as much as it pains me to say it now, I carried them with pride."

Arina didn't know what to say; the thought of her teacher embracing the Dark Side of the Force would have been impossible to believe, had the proof not been staring her in the face.

"What happened to you?" the padawan asked at last, finding her voice. "You never told me anything about this before."

"No, I didn't," Bastila answered heavily, "and I apologize for keeping that part of my past a secret from you. But to be honest, I was waiting for a moment like this to show those objects to you."

Arina was still reeling slightly from the revelation that her master wasn't as flawless as she'd once thought, and struggled to make sense of what she was being told.

"Why now?" she asked, and Bastila gave a small, almost weary smile as she shook her head.

"Because I know you probably think the Jedi Masters and I are bunch of talking heads all saying the same things over and over again, about 'controlling your emotions' and 'keeping yourself balanced' and never giving into your anger. But there really is a reason why we try to teach you these things, and I think you finally realized that back down on Kashyyyk.

"You finally saw for yourself how easy it is to give in to the Dark Side of the Force, and draw on its power. And every single Jedi, no matter who they are or what rank they hold, is capable of slipping just as you did, or falling outright. Even Revan, and even me. I keep those two relics there as a reminder of that."

Arina was silent for a few moments at her teacher's words. But when she finally spoke again, the shock she had shown earlier was completely eclipsed by frustration.

"But how can you expect me to never get angry?" she asked, exasperated. "It's impossible! I only kept those memories of my past buried as long as I did because I had no idea the person who murdered Rhion was still roaming around. And if Jerissk stays here on Dantooine for long, I won't be able to control myself. My old master is dead, and _he's_ still breathing! It's not fair!"

"Arina, listen to me."

Something in Bastila's tone got the padawan's attention immediately, but the teacher's focused gaze softened as soon as she was sure her student was listening.

"I never said I expected you to always control your anger every moment of every day, or to never feel fear or hatred. Like I've told you before, we're not droids. All of us feel, and that includes darker emotions like rage as well as purer ones, like love. It's unavoidable. So instead of trying to suppress your emotions, you need to realize instead that every emotion has its place. It's important not to let one overpower any others, and to stay balanced in that way. But to suggest that emotions can be outright ignored is just stupid, and any Jedi who claims to be in complete control of themselves is lying."

"But I can't just let it go, master," Arina said, her green eyes earnest as she spoke. "Rhion was the only friend I had for years. He helped keep me safe on Nar Shaddaa, and taught me how to defend myself. He… I…" the padawan struggled to put her feelings into words, the clenching feeling in her chest as the memories came back to her almost overwhelming.

"You loved him, didn't you?"

Arina's head rose sharply to meet Bastila's eyes at the words, her mouth open slightly in shock.

"What? No, I never said that."

"You didn't have to," Bastila said with a smile, reaching for the holographic image on her desk and handing it to her padawan. "Did you forget who you're talking to? It's not like I've never been in love myself."

Arina looked down at the image in her hand, and recognized up-close the figures of Bastila and Revan smiling back at her. They were both wearing medals; it looked like they were celebrating something, most likely the fall of the Star Forge and the end of the Civil War. Bastila looked happier than Arina had ever seen her master before, one arm around Revan's shoulders. The Jedi Master himself was beaming, reciprocating Bastila's gesture. Arina didn't even know Revan was capable of a real smile, let alone the huge grin he was wearing here. It would even go as far as to burst into laughter at something happening off-screen, right before the image looped again.

"I'd be lying if I said that what Revan and I share isn't one of the things I value most," Bastila said as she took the image back from her padawan and returned it to its place at her desk. "But in the end, it's nothing more than a bond between two people. From the point of view of the Living Force, it weighs no more than any other bond just like it. To realize that is one of the hardest sacrifices a Jedi must make, but it's also one of the most essential."

Arina was quiet again for several moments as she mulled over her teacher's words, before finally replying.

"So you're saying I should just forget about Rhion, and move on?"

"No," Bastila countered patiently, "I'm saying you need to make peace with what happened to him and move on, or your guilt is going to drive you insane."

"Then what would you suggest, master?"

"As I see it," the Knight answered, "you have two choices. Either you can accept that Rhion, as meaningful as he was to you, was only a single person. Someone who existed within the Force's flow and passed back into it, as we all do.

"Or, you can go and forgive Jerissk for his actions. With the understanding that even though he did something terrible, it was most likely done on the orders of the Sith, and not of his own volition. But either way, you can't keep letting Rhion's death lay so heavily over your mind. If you do, you're going to always be close to the darkness."

The padawan let her master's words sink into her head and nodded respectfully, before rising from her seat on the bed and walking through the door back out into the hall.

She couldn't do it. She couldn't marginalize someone who had meant so much to her. And she certainly couldn't forgive Jerissk for what he'd done, for what he'd taken from her. Arina knew there had to be another way to get the closure she so desperately needed, and she was going to find it herself if she had to.

No matter how long it took or what it took, she would find a way. She owed Rhion's memory at least that much.

* * *

.....

......

**A/N:** Three cheers for character development! I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter... I know I enjoyed writing Jolee, myself, for what little screentime he had here. That guy is just too cool. **Please review** if you would be so kind; it's really awesome to hear what you guys think. Thanks go out to everyone who's reviewed so far, it's appreciated immensely.

Gargantuan thanks also go out to **JasoTheArtisan** for being a master beta as always, and for his eleventh-hour editing wizardry with this chapter in particular. Truly exceptional.


	7. Doubt

**Legacies**

**Chapter 7:** Doubt

* * *

"I can already tell, it's going to be a _beautiful_ day today. And you and me, kid, we're gonna enjoy it together!"

"That assumes I find anything about you even remotely enjoyable, old man," Jerissk replied tonelessly, already finding himself fighting the urge to punch his new master in the face. "I'd rather be fed to a pack of Kath Hounds than listen to you blabber on."

"Oh, I wouldn't sound so eager about that if I was you, kid," Jolee said, his tone mirthful despite his student's frigid attitude. "Springtime is Kath Hound mating season, after all; the males work up quite the appetite, and I'm sure they would find Trandoshan meat to be the rarest of delicacies."

Jerissk scoffed, insulted by the implication that he couldn't even take on a few Kath Hounds.

"I know that look you're giving me, boy," Jolee spoke up, the mirth in his voice replaced by something much sterner. "That's the 'this old man is full of crap, let's just ignore him' look. I've seen it many times from whelps before you, and I doubt you'll be the last one neither. But before you go judging other people, perhaps you oughtta take a good look at yourself, first. You got one arm, no lightsaber and no other weapons to defend yourself with. And you still think you could take on the alpha Kath Hounds? Don't make me laugh."

The jab pushed Jerissk's anger over the edge, and he hissed sharply.

"Oh, you want to disagree with that?" Jolee prodded, unshaken by his student's clear taunt. "Well, okay then. Go ahead. I'll give you a free shot, and I'll make you a deal. If you can hit me one time with a blast of Force Lightning, no matter how strong, I'll go straight back to Revan right now and tell him I got nothin' left to teach you."

Jerissk narrowed his eyes skeptically, uncertain whether or not his unstable old teacher was being serious or not.

"You're not kidding, are you?" he asked after a few moments had passed in silence, and Jolee shook his head.

"Do I look like I'm joking to you, rookie?" the Jedi countered. "Go ahead. Do it. If you can, that is."

The Trandoshan took a deep breath and raised his hand out in front of him. Tapping into his raw emotion, he drew it to the surface, from the pit of his stomach up to his shoulder and down the length of his arm to his fingertips, where the tension pooled and waited to be released. Once he'd gathered enough of it, Jerissk snapped his focus and let the energy release.

But instead of the current of energy he'd been expecting, the attack amounted to little more than a few stray sparks that flitted around his hand for a few moments before vanishing entirely.

"Thought so," Jolee said shortly, as Jerissk could only look blankly at his hand in confusion and dismay. "It's supposed to look like this, in case you've forgotten."

The Jedi raised both of his hands and exhaled in a single slow, controlled breath, letting the Force flow outwards from his core as he did so. As soon as it reached the ends of his fingertips he let it escape, arcing out in myriad forking branches of electricity. The Force Lightning impacted the ground and left a smoking, blackened crater in its wake.

"So you tell me how it is, boy," Jolee said with a smug grin to the now-dumbstruck Trandoshan, "that a worn-out old Jedi like me can perfectly execute a trademark Sith attack, and you're over there looking like up just became down."

The words snapped Jerissk out of his shock, and he shook his head and growled.

"You just got lucky, you crazy bastard," he huffed. "That's all."

"Oh, really?" Jolee pressed, unwilling to let his stubborn student off the hook so easily. "So your explanation is that I got miraculously lucky and you got equally unlucky at the same time trying to perform the same attack? And you say _I'm_ the crazy one?"

Jerissk's growl turned into a snarl and he stalked on ahead of his new instructor, shoving his shoulder into the Jedi's on the way past him.

"You know, for a teacher, you're not being very helpful."

Jolee frowned as his eyes narrowed at the Trandoshan's back, his eccentric mask falling away briefly to reveal the hard face of a man who had seen many battles in his time, and just as much suffering. Another arc of Force Lightning shot out into the air with a shriek, but this time it had a very specific target.

It was only Jerissk's instincts and honed reflexes that kept a hole from being scorched through his back, pushing his body to roll hard to the side at the last possible moment.

"My job isn't to help you," Jolee said gravely as the Trandoshan got back onto his feet. "It's to train you. If you're expecting me to hold your one good hand and spoon-feed this to you, give up now and save me the trouble of watching you fail pathetically."

The hard words stilled Jerissk's retort on his tongue; he hadn't been expecting to be rebuked so harshly by the old Jedi. Begrudgingly, he felt his opinion of his new master rising ever so slightly.

"Not a chance," he shot back defiantly, a smile creeping back over his expression at the challenge. "I might not be doing this by choice, but no way am I going to stand here and just let some old, burned-out kook crack me. So if you're really here to train me, shut up and let's get started."

"No."

The single-word reply caught the Trandoshan off-guard again, and confusion returned to wipe the smile off of his face.

"What?"

"I think I was plenty clear the first time, boy," Jolee said, the affected twang back in his tone again as if his serious declaration a few moments ago hadn't even happened. "I'm not very fond of repeatin' myself, I'll have you know."

"This is bullshit," Jerissk said flatly, his rust-orange eyes widening in exasperation. "First you tell me you're going to train me, and now you tell me you're not going to? Make up your mind!"

"Ah, but that's what _you_ need to do, kid," the Jedi replied, that smug grin back and firmly in place. "Right now your emotions are so twisted and screwy that me trying to teach you anything would just be a waste of time for the both of us. If you can't even call up a spark of Lightning on command, how d'you think you'd handle something serious? Get that straightened out, and then we'll start your training."

"No," the Trandoshan said firmly, spitting Jolee's word back at him. "Screw that. What would be a waste of time is if I stuck around here for any longer listening to you talk in circles. I'm outta here."

Jerissk began to walk away, slowing down when he realized his teacher wasn't moving to stop him.

"What're you waiting for?" Jolee asked pointedly. "I thought you said you were 'outta here'?"

"You're fine with that?" the Trandoshan asked, and Jolee nodded. "No wonder the Order put you on sick leave; you're the worst teacher I've ever seen. And I've seen some bad ones, believe me."

"Oh, I do," the Jedi replied. "But like I said, your problem ain't my problem. Do whatever you gotta do to get your mind right, then come crawling back here like I know you will."

"Don't hold your breath," Jerissk quipped, before walking on without so much as a wave back over his shoulder.

Jolee watched his student's back grow smaller and smiled; in a lot of ways, talking to this kid was looking back at a younger version of himself. Jerissk certainly had a lot of potential, but the question was whether or not he would let himself see it. The kid was at a crossroads and couldn't decide which way to go; Light, Dark, or somewhere in the middle. He was trying to be a freelancer while still clinging to his old Sith philosophies, and the strain was splitting him in half.

The old Jedi knew that sooner or later, the kid was going to have make a choice. He was going to have to act on his own for the first time, and pick the road he would follow. Jolee just hoped that Jerissk didn't wind up making that choice with his last breaths.

* * *

Bastila was still in her room, meditating, when the hard sound of a knock on her door threw the Knight out of her concentration.

"Who is it?"

"It's me," Revan's voice came though the steel barrier, sounding unusually preoccupied. "You busy?"

"No," Bastila answered, rising to her feet and walking to the door. Truth be told, she did have a few backlogged reports to finish. But ever since Revan had taken on the responsibilities of being a Jedi Master, the time the two of them had been able to spend together had dwindled from little to almost none.

The door slid open and Revan took one step forward before drawing Bastila into an embrace and kissing her. The raw need and emotion in it took her by surprise, and to Bastila it seemed almost as if not a day had passed since the Star Forge had been destroyed. She sank into the kiss and let herself linger in it, enjoying the feeling again after so long without it. But all too soon Revan had broken away, the look in his eyes clearly telling Bastila that he was fighting as hard as she was to control himself.

"Where did _that_ come from?" she asked after she'd caught her breath, and Revan smiled.

"That was an apology," he said. "I'm sorry I brushed you off back on the _Hawk_. You talk to Arina yet?"

"Yes, and she left not too long ago. I'm still worried about her, to be honest," Bastila answered, walking over to her bed and sitting down as she spoke, Revan following suit and taking up the space next to her. "Once Jerissk gets tried and sentenced, though, I'm sure she'll calm down."

"Tried and sentenced?" Revan asked, confused. "What makes you think he'd be tried for anything?"

"What kind of a question is that? He killed a Jedi, didn't he?"

Revan shook his head, sad that he had to shoot down Bastila's hope for getting her padawan some closure but seeing no other choice.

"Jerissk killed a rogue Jedi who had broken from the Order, and was therefore no longer under our protection," the Master explained. "And as for the other attacks on Jedi he most likely carried out during his time as a Sith, we have no proof to use against him. There's no way we can charge Jerissk with any crime and remain in good conscience, Bastila."

"But then what are we going to do with him?"

"Jolee's training him as we speak."

Bastila was silent for a few heartbeats at her lover's reply, her eyes widening in surprise.

"You can't be serious," she said at last, causing Revan to raise an eyebrow.

"Can't I?"

"Don't get glib with me, damn it," Bastila snapped back, before catching herself and sighing. "Sorry. It's just… can you imagine what Arina's going to do when she hears about this? She's close enough to snapping as is, and if we're not careful this could send her over the edge."

"I'm sure you'll be able to keep her from falling," Revan said gently as he put his arm around Bastila's shoulders, pulling her closer to him. "If you could keep _me_ away from the Dark Side, Arina shouldn't be a problem."

"Don't flatter me," Bastila said as stoically as she could, but a smile still found its way onto her face all the same. "We both know you had as much to do with your redemption as I did."

"And we both also know that's a blatant lie," Revan countered with a smirk, "but I'm not about to have that debate with you again. My point is that you're as good a teacher as we have here on Dantooine, and it's about time you let yourself realize that. Keep doing what you're doing, and I'm sure Arina will turn herself around."

"I wish I could be as optimistic as you," Bastila replied wearily, "but I have a feeling nothing I can do is going to make a difference. She's been hurt deeply; too deeply for it to be put into perspective. Like how I felt when I heard from my mother on Tatooine that my father was dead… if you hadn't been there to calm me down, I don't know what I might have done. And I don't think that I can fill in that role for Arina."

"And if you can't, who else could?" Revan asked pointedly. "You're like a mother to her; if she'll listen to anyone, it'll be you. And if she falls in the end, then she falls. She'll have to decide then whether or not to pull herself back up, but if Arina never makes a mistake, she'll never learn anything. Do everything you can for her, but don't ruin yourself with guilt if it turns out you were just delaying the inevitable."

Revan felt Bastila stiffen against him for a moment, and knew what she was about to say.

"I can't accept that anyone's fall is inevitable," she said determinately. "I just can't."

The Jedi Master smiled, pleased to see his reverse psychology ploy had worked.

"And that's why she'll come around in the end, thanks to you," Revan replied. "The best thing you can do for her is not to give up. She'll see that strength, and it will inspire her, just like it inspired me."

Bastila was quiet for some moments, but when she spoke again her voice had lost its earlier melancholy.

"You're an absolutely terrible flatterer, you know that?"

"Who said I was being flattering?" Revan countered. "I respect you more than that. I was being perfectly honest."

"You're an even worse liar," she persisted, and Revan bit back a sigh.

"You really need to start taking credit for the things you do," he said. "It's not healthy to be so selfless all the time; a little sense of accomplishment is good for your self-confidence."

Bastila raised an eyebrow at the kernel of wisdom, a small smile playing about her lips as she regarded Revan.

"Since when did you turn into Master Vandar?"

"Well, I _am_ a Master as well, in case you'd forgotten," the other Jedi replied. "I get to speak in witticisms if I feel like it; comes with the territory."

Bastila laughed shortly and leaned over, placing a gentle kiss against her loved one's lips. It was moments like this, the small glimpses of peace and contentment, that made her so nervous whenever Revan left to go on a mission. There was always the fear in her heart that he wouldn't come back, and she didn't know what she would do without him. And judging by the emotions echoed in Revan as he returned the kiss, he felt the same way.

When they separated, Bastila was oddly quiet, a strange look playing in her eyes that Revan hadn't seen before.

"After this is over, when the Sith out there on Korriban or wherever they are have been defeated," she said at last, "what would you say to settling down for a while?"

"How so?"

Bastila frowned; for all of his intelligence, there were some things Revan just couldn't intuit. At this point, she wasn't sure whether he was being genuine, or just trying to maneuver his way out of talking about certain things.

"I mean having a family, Revan," she said bluntly, satisfied as she saw the light of understanding dawning in his eyes. "I'm getting old, and if not now, it's probably never going to happen."

Revan was stunned by the proposition; they were skirting the edge of Jedi custom just by having a relationship, and he was fairly sure that having offspring would be beyond forbidden. He knew the whole nature of their bond was atypical, but something about the notion of having children of his own troubled him deeply. Never one to mince words, and especially not with Bastila, Revan sighed and spoke.

"I don't think I'd make a very good father," he said heavily, his guilt surfacing once again. "And besides, I wouldn't jeopardize your position in the Order; you're on the way to becoming a Master, and the High Council would probably kick you out if they knew what we'd done."

"And you think I would care about that?" Bastila shot back, her tone taking on an insulted tinge. "I know you only took on the position of Master because you were pressed into it, so don't even try to hold it up on a pedestal. And you'd be a great father, so don't even try to use that as an excuse, either.

"Besides, I'm sure after the decimation the Civil War caused for the Jedi Order, they'd be overjoyed at the idea of a few more potential younglings coming into the world."

Revan could plainly see that this wasn't something he could just ignore, and tried one last gambit to dissuade Bastila.

"I doubt Lamar would share your point of view, princess."

"That implies anyone cares what he thinks. Don't try to talk your way out of this one; you said you respected me, didn't you?"

The Master felt his resistance crumbling as his own words were thrown back at him, and he could tell with almost painful clarity how much this mattered to his loved one.

"Look, Bastila," he said with a sigh, "you know I love you. But there's still a war going on, however small-scale it is now, and it's too early to think about what we're going to do after it's done. Once it is, though, I promise you we'll talk about this again."

Bastila's expression hardened, a look of hurt in her eyes that made Revan feel worse than he ever had before.

"That's just a long way of saying 'no', isn't it?" she replied flatly, and Revan shook his head.

"It's my way of saying that I promise you we'll talk about it again once these surviving Sith have been dealt with," he repeated. "Trust me."

He embraced Bastila again and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead before rising, walking to the door and opening it. Revan paused for a moment before he left, looking back over his shoulder and smiling.

"You're right about one thing, though," he said. "Neither of us cares what Lamar thinks."

The Master left with that, and as the meaning behind the words became apparent to Bastila, a wide smile spread across her face.

* * *

Revan walked down the corridor much faster than he had any need to, with no particular destination in mind. He had too many other things on his mind to afford a destination any place; what he needed was time to sort through the maelstrom his life had so suddenly become, all in the space of a few hours. After Jerissk had left to train with Jolee, the other members of the Council had immediately set upon Revan to ask if he would be able to verify the Trandoshan's claims once he started to talk. This, of course, had led inexorably to the matter of whether or not Revan still had any reliable contacts left over from his time as a Sith. They knew full well how little he desired to renew any kind of connection with that part of himself, and yet they'd asked anyway - no doubt seeking to use his past sins like tools to their advantage.

And then Bastila had chosen now of all times to pose the 'family' question, which had thrown a whole different kind of wrench into Revan's state of mind. Because the more he thought about it, the more he found himself warming to the idea. But the fact that it would probably never work in the end still loomed over the whole thing like a shadow, and it just made the Jedi even more frustrated. Desperate for some solitude and a few minutes of peace to regain his balance, Revan headed into the first empty meditation room he came to and closed the door behind him, locking it tightly.

Taking up a meditative position on the floor, the Jedi breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly and tried to let the twisted knot of emotions unravel itself naturally. He had to clear his head, or trying to turn to the Force for guidance would be all but impossible.

His mind reached back into the darkness that represented his days as the Dark Lord of the Sith, opening the lock Revan normally kept on those memories and allowing them to float to the surface. The image of him at the head of a long table, Malak standing to his right, was the first recollection Revan saw. And he realized, as he thought about it, that it might very well be the most valuable one he could observe at the moment. Looking carefully at the faces of the Dark Jedi and Sith sitting at the table, Revan quickly began to cross-reference these powerful warriors with the ones he had fought and killed on Korriban and elsewhere during the war against Malak. One by one he counted them among the dead, until he was left with ten.

The ten that had escaped his judgment.

No doubt, these were the Sith that had spearheaded the shattered Order's revival in the wake of Malak's death. They were all strong, cunning and ruthless, but most dangerous of all was the intelligence they all possessed. The presence of mind needed to understand that nothing good would come of them fighting amongst themselves for a sole position of leadership. No, they all would have come to the mutual conclusion that they stood a much better chance against the Jedi united. The understanding that their personal grudges, many though they were, would stay buried until the Jedi had been buried in turn.

He really had done too good of a job picking his own soldiers, Revan thought with a sigh. Now he would be facing off against the best warriors his Empire had boasted, and he had no one to blame but himself. He still held on desperately to the outside hope that Jerissk would say something different, but Revan wasn't naïve enough to seriously put stock in the chance. His skeletons were banging hard on the closet door, and it was only a matter of time before they came marching out.

Shifting his focus, the Jedi Master brought his mind back to the words Jerissk had hissed to him in Dosh earlier aboard the _Ebon Hawk_. He had killed Arina's old master, Rhion, for a reason. It hadn't been just a random assault. But whatever the reason was, it was also something that would have a hugely negative effect on Arina. What was he hiding? And more importantly, did Revan trust himself enough to ask for the answer, knowing that if it ever leaked to Bastila, Arina would surely hear it as well? Sighing, Revan shoved that thought out of his mind before it had the chance to follow the thread back to Bastila.

The Jedi Master suddenly felt very alone, and strangely enough found himself wishing for the counsel of his former apprentice. As far apart as he and Malak had drifted over the years, Revan had always considered him his best friend. He'd lost count of the number of times Malak's advice had offered a key second perspective on a tactic during the Mandalorian Wars, and it was that kind of advice the Jedi was in sore need of now.

But it was useless to seek help from the dead, and especially dead Sith. Revan had heard of the theory that it was possible for a being strong in the Light Side of the Force to retain their presence as a Ghost after death, but it was considered extremely difficult even for Jedi Masters to accomplish. So difficult, in fact, that Masters such as Vandar and Lamar treated the very nature of Force Ghosts as little more than a myth.

"Master Revan, are you in there?"

The question, coupled with a sharp knock, threw Revan out of his trance. Frowning, he knew there was no way he would regain equilibrium for a while; and so he rose, walking to the door and opening it.

"Do you need something?" he asked as calmly as he could to the one who had knocked, a lithe female Miraluka who was the padawan of Yuthura Ban, the Twi'lek Revan had turned back to the Light on Korriban. "Where's your master?"

"Well, that's actually why I came to find you," the Miraluka said slightly sheepishly, averting her face even more from Revan's gaze. He was used to the eyeless species not looking at him directly: the Miraluka saw through the Force alone, and to look at someone as strong as Revan straight-on was apparently like gazing directly into the sun.

"My master said she had something important to discuss with you, but she was so busy filling out reports that she asked me to come find you in her stead. I apologize if I interrupted anything, sir," she finished with a bow, and Revan smiled, his earlier annoyance gone completely.

"Not at all, Selvi," he said kindly, his smile widening slightly as the padawan flushed with pride that a Master who wasn't her own had remembered her name. Some of the Jedi had commented on Revan's knack for recalling names, but to the former General it was simply good sense to never forget a face. Soldiers weren't nearly as willing to fight for a leader who considered them soulless pawns, after all. "I was just thinking some things over. Lead the way; I'm sure whatever your master has to tell me, it's very important."

The Miraluka nodded and turned, walking down the hall as Revan fell into step beside her. As he walked, an idea sprang into the Jedi's head that almost made him stop cold in shock that he hadn't already thought of it. Even if Malak was dead and the ten surviving Sith generals were now roosting on Korriban, Revan still had other allies he could count among the ashes of the Sith Order, if they were still alive. Allies whose loyalty ran much too deep to be corrupted a distinction like 'Jedi' or 'Sith'.

A group of soldiers he had personally trained to answer to him and him alone, a group Revan had painstakingly kept secret even from Malak. A group whose leader was the single best spy Revan had ever seen, and someone who could prove to be a huge boon for the Jedi in the fight to come.

The Wraiths.

* * *

……

………

**A/N:** Huzzah, another chapter posted. Sorry for the delay on this one-- I've had it completed for a bit, but both laziness and schoolwork conspired to give me no time to edit until now. Hope it was still an enjoyable read regardless, and **please review**; the feedback I've been getting so far has been awesome and has completely surpassed my expectations, and for that I thank all of you who've taken the time to leave it. Let's keep the good times rolling, no?

**Also,** as was pointed out to me by one particularly astute reader, there's a logic gap in the way the ages of the characters match up, specifically Jerissk. Upon further examination, I, too, have discovered that the age discrepancy doesn't make much sense at all.

But to be perfectly honest, I don't really care. I just didn't feel like wading through the mire of teen angst again, and so I made Jerissk 22 and Arina 20-ish. And Revan and Bastila are about 34. And in the end, it's more of a cosmetic issue than anything integral to the plot, anyway. But if any of you guys and gals out there were scratching your heads over it, I just wanted to clear that up.


	8. Acceptance

**Legacies**

**Chapter 8: **Acceptance

* * *

It wasn't very long before niggling misgivings at the back of Jerissk's mind began to gain more and more strength as he trudged on through the pastoral landscape of Dantooine. For one, he was going to need to find some way off of the planet, and that was all but impossible without going through the Enclave. Which was out of the question completely, since the Trandoshan would rather live the rest of his days out as a hermit here than give that crazy old Jedi who called himself his teacher the satisfaction of being proven right.

That, and Jerissk still didn't have a lightsaber. It wasn't that he didn't put stock into his natural ability as a Trandoshan to track, hunt and kill anything that breathed with his own two hands. But after spending his entire life with a lightsaber at his side, not having one there to call upon left him feeling oddly hollow inside. Of course, he could try to build a new one, but that would require finding the raw materials for constructing a lightsaber. And those were in very short supply due to the very nature of what they were: nexuses of Force energy alone were rare enough, but for those to compound into the crystalline hearts needed to power a lightsaber was an even rarer phenomenon.

How the hell had he even wound up here?

No matter how determined he was to sever his ties to his past, they just kept getting stronger. As a bounty hunter, he'd been drawn instinctively to Force-sensitive targets or ones that were presumed to be so, finding comfort in the familiarity of an opponent he knew how to deal with. He had attempted to rationalize to himself that his use of a lightsaber now was as nothing more than a weapon, but in its absence the Trandoshan realized with painful clarity just how much it had become a part of him over the years. It was his outlet for the Force currents that flowed constantly through him, seeking expression. And without it, Jerissk felt himself growing tenser and tenser as his instincts strove in vain to be acted upon.

As a Sith, he had grown to despise the constant danger his life was in as Blademaster, always keeping one eye over his shoulder to watch for those ambitious enough to try to take his place. To say nothing of the Council of Ten, who had raised him up to his position only to strike him down from it later, his crime nothing more than following the Sith Code to its logical conclusion. But as a bounty hunter trying to go back to his native roots, Jerissk had found himself missing the very environment he had struggled so hard to get away from. It was satisfying being the most accomplished hunter around, but when the competition consisted of old, worn-out army veterans and a few stupid meatheads just looking to blow something up, such satisfaction was usually weak at best.

He was torn between a life he'd hated but grown used to and a life he had been born for but had long-since outgrown, one foot in each but not willing to commit to either. And even if the Sith Order would never take him back now, Jerissk couldn't help but wonder if it was worth a shot.

If only there was a middle road he could take…

The Trandoshan was thrown out of his thoughts by the sound of a vicious snarl, and brought himself sharply back into the present to see a pack of Kath Hounds staring him down, digging their front paws threateningly into the soft earth. Jerissk had to still his hand from reaching towards the empty holster that had once held his lightsaber, instead focusing on how he was going to get out of this bind. There were four of them, all bulls from their looks, and aggressive to match. If he'd had a lightsaber, there would be no problem. If he'd had no lightsaber but both of his arms, this skirmish would amount to nothing more than a nice morning warm-up.

But Jerissk had no lightsaber, only one arm, and very few options. His command over the Force had been shown to be unreliable at best for the moment, and not worth risking. So he did the only thing he could in these circumstances, for the first time in his life.

He ran.

The Kath Hounds followed, the pounding of their paws sending small tremors through the earth as Jerissk sprinted to stay ahead of them, all the while trying to remain calm and think of a way to get through this in one piece. The volleys of Force Lightning he tried to shoot back behind him were as impotent as the attack he'd tried earlier with Jolee, and the strongest Push he could muster only caused so much as a brief stutter-step from the pack leader before it was shaken off entirely, the Kath Hound's rage only increasing.

Jerissk kept on running, wondering why it was that the Force had chosen now of all times to abandon him utterly. Trying to draw on his emotions only made things even muddier, and the Trandoshan began to realize with chilling certainty that he probably wasn't going to survive this chase. Looking ahead, Jerissk saw the mouth of a cave opened wide in the rock face he was quickly approaching and knew he would have to risk facing whatever was in there: the Kath Hounds wouldn't be keen on following him into a narrow, dark space where they would be almost blind and he would be able to see as clearly as he was right now.

The Trandoshan ran right through the cave's maw and into the inky blackness, skidding to a halt soon after to take stock of the situation. There was a light coming from not too far away, soft but luminescent enough to reveal the boundaries of the cave's walls. Jerissk moved forward deliberately, his nose sniffing the air at regular intervals for any scent that seemed out of the ordinary.

The precaution paid off. Shortly after he'd come through the first passage and into the open space where the light source rested- apparently clusters of bright crystals- Jerissk heard a ragged hiss off to his side and leapt backwards. A rancid smell rushed by him as a Kinrath lunged into the space he had been standing in moments before, pausing only for the heartbeat it took to realize it had missed its prey before turning and leaping again. Jerissk dodged out of the way once more, moving closer and closer to the nearest crystal formation as he continued to evade the Kinrath's tenacious attacks. As soon as it was within reach, the Trandoshan gripped a spike of crystal and snapped it off, pleased with the size of the shard.

The Kinrath attacked again, just as Jerissk had hoped it would. Side-stepping this time instead of committing to a full dodge, he brought the crystal shard back and slammed it soundly between the large insect's eyes. The impact hit with less of the thud and more of a squelch, the hard crystal making a mush out of whatever passed for a brain inside the Kinrath's head. The creature wilted and folded in on itself pathetically, collapsing to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Jerissk exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, withdrawing the shard and keeping it at the ready until he was completely certain there were no other Kinrath around. A few tense moments passed before the Trandoshan let himself relax; if there had been any other insects skulking in the shadows, his blunt slaughter of the one brave enough to attack first must have set just the precedent Jerissk had been hoping for. The worry of being attacked passed for now, he stopped and looked at the cavern he'd stumbled into.

And what a sight it was. Crystals jutted out in bunches from core formations that seemed to root themselves deep in the cave floor, their green and blue and red hues stemming from some unseen source to illuminate the walls of the cave with almost hypnotic splashes of color. But it wasn't the vibrant visual display that caught Jerissk's attention the most: it was the strength of the Force in this place.

It wasn't clearly pure or menacing, Light or Dark; it simply _was_. Powerful enough for the omnipresence of the energy currents to be almost tangible, the awed Trandoshan felt as though he was standing in the presence of multiple, massive hearts, beating thunderously in a synchronization that had been reached over hundreds and hundreds of years; maybe even a millennia. The sheer overpowering energy made Jerissk's own lack of control stand out even more jarringly, and he felt compelled by something stirring deep within him to find a way to renew the connection that had become so frayed. He knew that if he didn't, staying for too long in the presence of so much power without allowing it to flow through him rather than over him would crush his will into oblivion.

But the chase with the Kath Hounds and his encounter with the Kinrath had taken much more out of the fatigued warrior than he'd first thought, and he was powerless to hold back the crushing press of the Force as it dragged his mind down into oblivion. It wasn't the comforting darkness of sleep, though: Jerissk could still feel every nerve in his body with an awareness that felt far sharper than normal.

It wasn't long before the memory seeped out in front of him, given eerie life, and the reason for the hyperawareness he was feeling became painfully clear.

_The smell of the smoke was what came back to Jerissk first, the acrid, rotting smoke of Nar Shaddaa that hinted gruesomely at its sources. This moon had truly earned its name as the 'Smuggler's Moon'; any order that had been here vanished completely once the Hutts arrived, replaced by the mad, amoral and bloody scramble for credits and turf. This was the rat hole his quarry had decided to crawl down, the backwater stain Rhion had forced Jerissk to visit. No doubt that self-righteous Echani knew how much his pursuer hated places like Nar Shaddaa, and that was precisely why he'd chosen it._

_Jerissk had learned a lot about Rhion over the years he'd spent hunting him. The Echani had been the one target so far that the Trandoshan hadn't killed in their first clash, and Jerissk's anger at his failure had only deepened as Rhion refused to die again and again and again. No matter how many times he thought he'd finished him off, the cockroach somehow managed to limp away, lick his wounds and come back to haunt the Trandoshan again._

_But this time, things would be different. There was no way Rhion had felt him coming, with all of this other interference from the multitude of people crowded around the streets. The very thing the Echani had played on to keep him safe and concealed would be what ultimately led to his death; the only reason the hunter had been able to find his prey had been because Rhion's sickeningly potent Force signature rose up even above this mass of lifeforms. _

_Jerissk almost chuckled at the irony, but kept his emotions tightly controlled: the last thing he wanted to do now was tip off his opponent. Slowly and deliberately approaching the small squat where Rhion's unmistakable Force signature was bleeding from, the Trandoshan drew his lightsaber, gripped it tightly and kicked down the rusting steel door with a grating crumple before walking into the room._

_The first thing Jerissk saw was his enemy, sitting at one end of a table and apparently finishing a late dinner, his fork frozen halfway to his lips as a piece of meat his mouth would never taste sat pierced on the tines._

_The second thing Jerissk saw was that Rhion was not alone. There was someone else sitting at the other end of the table. A girl. She couldn't have been older than 17, two years Jerissk and Rhion's junior. She had clearly been surprised by the unexpected intrusion, her green eyes wide with shock and the beginnings of paralyzing fear._

_Jerissk immediately looked back over at Rhion, the look in his narrowed, rust-orange eyes speaking for him._

_You brought a _girl_ into this, you bastard?_

_The Echani had obviously taken note of Jerissk's aversion to harming bystanders during their various confrontations, and had taken measures to procure his own human shield._

_Rhion's silver eyes were all but grinning even as his mouth remained set in a firm line, only moving at last as he opened it to speak to the girl across from him._

"_Arina," he said seriously, "get back."_

_It took a few heartbeats for the words to reach her, in which time Jerissk ignited his lightsaber with a hiss to punctuate the Echani's urging. He had no desire to get someone who carried no lightsaber involved in this fight, even if she did seem upon further sensing to be fairly strong in the Force. An unarmed bystander was off-limits, regardless of their Force sensitivity. If he was lucky, the girl would take it a step further and leave the area completely, melting into the crowd and disappearing for good. _

_Unfortunately, the Trandoshan realized as Arina moved to the back of the room and stood there defiantly, he would have no such luck. She was concentrating the Force around her while she stared down Jerissk with a potent mixture of fear and anger seething outwards, waiting. Rhion rose to his feet and drew his own lightsaber before promptly igniting it, the blue glow serving only to further illuminate the coldness of his steel-gray eyes and dark silver hair as he leapt forward to attack. _

_Jerissk was caught off-guard by the strategy, expecting his enemy to begin with a Force attack, which were by far the Echani's strong suit. He was a heartbeat too late in realizing that was exactly the reaction Rhion had been trying to provoke, and the Trandoshan couldn't move quickly enough to dodge or deflect the bolts of Force Lightning that came shrieking out at him as the Echani executed his feint at the last possible moment. This was a battle that would be decided by the tiniest of mistakes, and Jerissk had already committed an enormous error._

_Determined not to let that error cost him the duel, Jerissk wasted no time in turning to face Rhion once again and commencing to unleash a withering volley of strikes down at him. If he gave him no time to focus, there was no way his enemy would be able to tap into his peerless command of the Force. And judging by the look of frustration on Rhion's face, the strategy was working beautifully. Jerissk wondered fleetingly why his opponent wasn't trying to maneuver the fight closer to Arina, but the thought left as soon as it had come. He had to focus every ounce of his mind on this duel if he wanted to survive. _

_The Echani's guard wavered and cracked soon enough as he crumpled to the floor; Rhion never had been the best with a blade. Jerissk gripped his lightsaber and held it point-down, ready to deliver the final, lethal blow to his enemy's heart. This time, the Trandoshan swore, he wouldn't leave anything to chance. Rhion's gray eyes stared back up at him with emotionless defiance, as if goading on his own deathblow. Jerissk brought the blade down, feeling the thrill of victory coursing through him already—_

_Except that the strike never landed. Jerissk's hand was stayed by a sudden and completely unexpected shock that started in the middle of his back and spread rapidly over his entire body. The telltale blue current of the Force Lightning dissipated in a few seconds, but it was enough time for Rhion to get back on his feet._

_The Echani quickly grabbed his opponent's shoulder and used the Force to pull Jerissk's strength from his limbs and transfer it to his own. _

"_Arina," Rhion called out angrily, "why did you do that? I told you to stay back; you're no match for hi—ugh!"_

_His admonition was abruptly cut off as Jerissk struck his chest with a brutal kick, sending the Echani hurtling into the far wall. The Force Drain had sapped the Trandoshan of some of his strength, but he was too determined and too angry to let something like that stop him; not when he was so close to victory. Turning around, he locked eyes with the girl who had been stupid enough to attack him. She held his gaze firmly, determination in her eyes that was belied by the trembling of her knees._

"_I didn't want to involve you in this, kid," Jerissk hissed as he advanced on her. "But if you really want to die that badly, be my guest. Your boyfriend over there'll be joining you soon, anyway."_

"_Don't sell my master short, you bastard!"_

_Arina tried to summon up the spark of Lightning again, but it did nothing more than crackle futilely around her hands before vanishing completely. Jerissk was impressed by the fact someone as raw as her could have pulled that attack off even once, but she'd clearly hit her limit. If this girl really was being trained by Rhion, he should have taught her first and foremost never to fight an opponent so far above her capacity. The Trandoshan readied his lightsaber to stab through Arina's heart, determined at least to make her death as painless as possible in honor of her attempt to protect her master, as foolish as it had been. As soon as he was within striking range, he planted his feet and lunged forward, squashing the feeling of disgust that rose up within him even now. _

_Jerissk's lightsaber sunk through flesh a heartbeat later, but he could tell from the distinctly feminine scream that echoed through the room a moment later that he'd been thwarted from hitting his target a second time._

"_Master!"_

_Rhion had moved in front of the strike, stopping the lightsaber's momentum with his own body and keeping the blade from reaching Arina. His frame lurched forward as the life began to flee from him, but the Echani stayed on his feet all the same._

"_I thought I told you," he rasped out in a weak whisper, "to stay back."_

_Jerissk swiftly withdrew the blade from his enemy's lung, pausing only for a few moments before slamming it into the other side of Rhion's chest and pulverizing the Echani's heart. His body had begun to sag even before the second attack had landed, but Jerissk wanted to be sure beyond all shadow of a doubt that his long-time prey was finally dead. Rhion's corpse slumped to the floor with a pathetic thud, leaving the Trandoshan staring down a decidedly shell-shocked Arina._

_Whatever defiance and strength she'd shown earlier were gone now, buried deep under a layer of devastation and trauma that she'd probably never completely get over. Jerissk probably would have felt bad, if the girl hadn't brought it upon herself. Still, considering that she posed less than no threat to him now and was as good as defenseless, killing her seemed pointlessly brutal. Besides, the streets of Nar Shaddaa were pitiless enough; alone, she'd probably die within a month anyway, or get sold into slavery. _

_For her sake, the Trandoshan hoped it was the former._

_Retracting his lightsaber and retrieving Rhion's weapon as proof of the kill, Jerissk turned and walked away without another word. He had just passed through the doorway when Arina shouted out after him, her tone stricken and hateful._

"_Fight me, you coward!" she screamed. "Come back here and finish what you started!"_

_Jerissk turned back only long enough to grip Arina with the Force and throw her into the nearby wall, knocking her unconscious. With the girl's raving quieted, there was no reason for him to linger there any longer. Putting the hood of his cloak back over his head, the Trandoshan melted into the teeming crowd and slipped off toward his ship._

The vision finally faded as Jerissk woke up sluggishly, wincing in discomfort as his body lurched away along with his mind. But even though the vision had ended, the bitter insult Arina had thrown at him still rang in the warrior's ears as immediately as if she'd just spoken it to him now.

_Coward._

The idea of retreat in any form was loathed by Trandoshans on principle, but Jerissk couldn't deny the truth of the word, as much as he wanted to. Arina had been right: all he'd ever done from the day he'd been ousted from his position on Korriban was run, throwing wary glances back at the Sith shadows he knew were creeping up behind him. His honor dictated he would never show his back to an enemy; if he would claim to have such honor in order to avoid association with his old Order, it was about time he started acting like it.

Rising steadfastly to his feet, Jerissk turned once more to face where the crystals sat pulsing, as if they were waiting impatiently for something. He reached out and felt for the Force, but all he got in return was a faint tingling. The crushing power he'd felt earlier was gone. Quickly quelling the frustration that threatened to throw him off even further, Jerissk exhaled slowly and closed his eyes, turning his thoughts inward.

And he saw it. The dark, sickly smog that flowed through him like a toxin, disrupting the natural currents of the Force almost to the point of nonexistence. A smog of his own imposing. And it hadn't always been there, either; even though Force combat had never been his specialty, Jerissk had been able to at least hold his own against everybody who crossed him, save one. This obstruction had started somewhere, and he needed to figure out when that had been. Reaching back into his memories again, the Trandoshan tried to find the moment that would have caused him enough turmoil to turn his back on the Sith, and on the tools he had used to fight for them.

He didn't have to think for very long at all before he'd found his answer. And it took the form of a terrified face with wide, trembling green eyes, framed messily by bangs of sandy-blonde hair. The girl who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time; the one Jerissk had been completely unprepared to deal with.

Arina.

There was a reason why Jerissk had been so particular about his targets, even during his time as a Sith: he absolutely despised killing unarmed opponents. There was a callousness and weakness in it that he couldn't condone. If the enemy was capable and holding a weapon, if they'd entered into a fight knowing their lives might be forfeit and had accepted it, then Jerissk would fight them to the end, whoever they were. So he'd always made absolutely sure that his prey wouldn't be surrounded by any innocent bystanders before going after them, ensuring a quick, clean kill with minimal entanglements.

But Rhion had found that out about him somehow, and planned accordingly. That Echani bastard had picked himself up a street urchin on Nar Shaddaa, and even if Arina hadn't saved his life, watching her guardian die in front of her had planted a seed of hatred deep inside of her heart: Rhion's last act of spite toward his would-be assassin. Jerissk had known full well at the time that leaving her alive went against common sense and the most basic tenets of the Sith Code, but the fact remained that she had been nothing more than a scared, unarmed and defenseless girl.

So he'd turned his back on her and left, returning to Korriban only to find that word of his failure to tie up the loose end had somehow preceded him. He'd been expelled from the Order for his show of weakness, and a death mark had been placed on his head. Disgusted and enraged, Jerissk had made the choice then and there to never associate with the Sith again and had taken up the mantle of a freelancing bounty hunter.

But he'd soon found out that the Dark Side wasn't something that could just be wished away. Jerissk would draw on it when he needed to, a little at a time, always determining that each successive tap would be the last. But it never was, and the poison of his constant denial had corroded his connection to the Force over time to such a degree that he now found himself here, stranded on Dantooine in a cave in the middle of the outback with one arm, no lightsaber and hiding from Kath Hounds to save his skin.

Something clearly needed to change, before he truly lost it. He needed to start over. Taking a deep breath, Jerissk saw all the fear and uncertainty that still existed within him… and he let it go. If he was ever going to escape his past, after all, the first thing he had to do was stop being so ashamed and afraid of it. He could see now, thanks to his experience in this cave, that the nature of the Force in its pure state was neither Light nor Dark, and that calling upon its power wouldn't inherently corrupt him, as he had been afraid of for so long. The problem hadn't been the Force itself, but that the only way Jerissk had ever known how to manipulate it was through the emotional and volatile filter of the Dark Side.

Letting all of that emotion go and simply drifting along the current of the Force as it flowed around and through him, the Trandoshan felt relieved as he began to renew the connection with the energy he had tried to isolate himself from for so long. He could feel the symbiosis of the crystals with the ground and the cave, the interconnectedness that was the very nature of the Force. Now, instead of threatening to crush him, the power of the crystal pillars buoyed him up, filling Jerissk with that same sense of hyperawareness he'd felt before his vision.

He reached out with his mind and tried to grab hold of the energy, but only felt a brief, fleeting connection before it slipped through his fingers. That was fine as a start, though; Jerissk knew that re-learning how to use something like the Force in a different way after being accustomed to one method for so long would be like re-teaching his body how to walk. It would take time before he was back up to his former level of skill, but that wasn't a problem.

After all, he had a whole month to learn as much as he could from that crazy old bastard Jolee. And once that time was up, he would decide for himself, for the first time, where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do.

Jerissk gathered his focus one last time and walked back down the dark hallway to the mouth of the cave. Even though his connection to the Force was still weak, it was strong enough that the Trandoshan could tell the Kath Hounds had given up and left before he reached the mouth of the cave. As he walked back out into the open air, though, Jerissk was surprised to find that the sun was still rising in the sky, creeping towards its noonday peak. He'd expected to have lost more time in the cave, considering all that had transpired there.

He wandered for a while, not really caring where he wound up, until a plume of smoke on the horizon caught his attention and he frowned. Jerissk knew exactly who had made the fire the smoke was undoubtedly coming from, and he knew just what sort of greeting would be waiting for him when he got there.

"'Bout time you showed back up, boy," Jolee said with a self-satisfied smile as Jerissk walked up and took a seat on the ground by the modest fire. "I was beginning to think maybe some Kath Hounds had eaten you."

"And I trust you would have mourned my death for days on end," the Trandoshan countered dryly. "What's with building a fire in the daylight?"

"Just a little trick you learn when you've been out here long enough," the Jedi said almost wistfully. "Kath Hounds don't like it when you wander willy-nilly onto their territory, but if you get a fire going to show them where you are, they usually give you a wide berth. They're not aggressive by nature, those Kath Hounds."

"Try telling that to the pack I ran into earlier," Jerissk said, before getting to his feet again and stretching, feeling the stiffness in his muscles ease away. "So, we going to train now, or what?"

Jolee's smug smile slowly turned into a genuine one and he rose, stamping out the fire as he did so.

"Well, aren't we enthusiastic all of a sudden," he said appreciatively. "See, that's what happens when you take my advice."

Jerissk chuckled, taking up a defensive stance and reaching out with the Force as Jolee readied his hands to release some short volleys of Lightning for him to dodge.

"Don't push it, old man."

* * *

...

.....

**A/N:** First off, a thousand apologies that this chapter took so long to post; the middle section of it (the flashback) had to be re-written from scratch twice, and on top of that exams have finally started and are slowly grinding down my soul. That said, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and **please review** if you would be so kind. I can't promise that I'll update any faster than normal thanks to exams, but they still make me feel all warm and fuzzy and are incredibly appreciated. Thanks a ton to everyone who's been reading and reviewing so far: you're all awesome.

Also, lest I forget, a million thanks go out once again to **JasoTheArtisan**, beta-extraordinaire and pretty cool guy; he writes awesome fics and doesn't afraid of anything. If any of you out there are also _Bleach_ fans, go check his stuff out.


	9. Vengeance

**Legacies**

**Chapter 9:** Vengeance

* * *

The walk down the halls of the Enclave to Yuthura Ban's quarters was a long one, giving Revan more than enough time to recall the names of those who had served in his elite group of spies. The Wraiths had been a small unit by design: to keep its existence as secret as possible, and to make sure only the most capable Sith joined the ranks. Five warriors of varying ages and races had been the Wraiths' nucleus, expanding to seven as Revan had felt Malak growing more and more aggressive. As time went on, the Wraiths began to serve their commander more by keeping tabs on Malak's secret activities than by infiltrating and spying on the Jedi and the Mandalorians.

Revan could only hope that all seven had made it through the Civil War unscathed; he shuddered inwardly at the thought of any of them being stationed on the Star Forge when it imploded.

The Master's eyes wandered over to where Selvi was walking a few steps ahead of him and his eyes narrowed slightly. Yuthura's Miraluka padawan didn't wear a hood to cover her eyeless face like many of her kin did, opting instead to wear a black silken blindfold. The color matched the shade of her hair, which was kept to just above shoulder-length to avoid being a nuisance.

"So," Revan broached, "have you thought about taking the Trials yet? You're quite the pupil, Selvi."

The padawan hesitated at the question, and by the time she replied Revan was walking by her side.

"No, Master," she said, her voice lower than it had been a few moments earlier. "I'm not ready for them yet. Not even close."

"You really think so? I've seen you outclass a Knight or two on the training grounds recently…"

"On the training grounds," Selvi repeated almost wearily, turning her head to glance sidelong at Revan. "With all due respect, that's nothing compared to running missions, Master. Those are life-and-death situations."

Revan bit his tongue to keep quiet and sighed, wondering why he'd even brought the point up when he knew what answer was coming. The same thing it always was, and at this rate, the same thing it always would be.

"You still miss him," Revan said softly after a few moments, "don't you?"

There was another hitch in Selvi's step, but she kept the pace this time.

"What does that have to do with anything, Master?" she asked, her tone now completely flat. "He's dead."

"He was your brother."

"He was."

Revan stopped walking and turned to face Selvi head-on, masking the strength of his Force signature so that the Miraluka could meet his gaze without discomfort.

"Are you worried that what happened to him will happen to you, if you become a Knight?"

"No," the padawan replied, her voice dead to emotion but for an edge of sadness.

"Do you hate yourself for not convincing him to stay behind? Do you hate me for convincing him to follow my lead?"

"No," Selvi repeated, the edge growing sharper.

Revan paused, aware that if Selvi had been able to, she would probably be crying. He softened his tone, almost to the point of pleading.

"Then what's holding you back?"

"With all due respect, Master," the Miraluka said forlornly, "why do you even care?"

Revan was silent for a few beats, again regretting his impulsive question. It was clear the nerve he was touching was still as raw as it had been four years ago, if not more so.

"Because Arina is struggling with a problem similar to yours," he explained, his tone subdued. "I didn't mean to pry, but I thought she could benefit from another perspective."

"I see," Selvi said after a long moment, her voice gaining some of its strength back as the pair began to walk once more. "Apologies that I wasn't able to help, Master Revan."

"There's nothing to apologize for. I was being insensitive; it's been a long two days."

The Miraluka was quiet for several heartbeats, and when she spoke again her voice was back to normal.

"I don't hate you, Master."

Revan let the words hang in the air, part of him relishing the absolution while the rest of him was all-too-eager to remember his role in ruining Selvi's childhood.

"Why not?" he pressed. "You have every right to."

The Miraluka shook her head.

"No. What happened to Silvas wasn't your fault."

Revan's eyes clouded over as the memory rushed up to meet him, his voice gaining a melancholy tinge.

"I wish that were the case," he mused, "but I seem to remember being quite persuasive at the time."

But Selvi just shook her head again, almost mournfully.

"He'd made his mind up before then, Master," she told him. "You know that we Miraluka see through the Force… sometimes, that can extend into visions. Visions of the past, or of things to come. Silvas told me he'd had a vision of the future right before the War broke out; one that told him he had to go with you and Malak. He'd just barely had his braid cut, but he wouldn't take 'No' for an answer.

"So I don't hold it against you, Master Revan," the padawan finished with a sigh, as if the recollection had sapped the rest of her strength from her. "It was his choice, and if he died doing what he thought was right, then it was simply his time."

Revan couldn't help but be impressed.

"Wise words, for someone so young."

Selvi gave a sad smile.

"No one touched by the War stayed young for long."

Revan said nothing as they approached the door to Yuthura Ban's quarters at last, but his hand hesitated as it reached out to knock the door. Instead, it moved and came to rest lightly on Selvi's shoulder.

"Silvas would always tell me how proud he was of you, whenever we spoke of home," he said gently. "And he wasn't someone to use those words lightly."

"I know," the padawan said wistfully, before bowing. "Thank you, Master. If you would excuse me."

"Of course," Revan answered, lifting his hand and watching for a moment as Selvi departed. She was strong, just like her brother, and she would certainly go far… it was just a matter of when she would discover that strength herself. Sighing under the weight of the guilt that hung over his shoulders, Revan straightened himself up and knocked on door before him. It opened with a soft _hiss_, and the Master stepped into the room.

"Thank you for that, Revan."

Yuthura Ban had never been one to mind formalities, and Revan didn't feel obliged to stand on them either around her. He helped himself to the seat across from the Knight as she busied herself with holopads arranged haphazardly in front of her, waiting for Yuthura to speak again. When the Twi'lek held her silence, the Master felt compelled to break the lull himself.

"What did you want to see me about?"

"Nothing in particular," Yuthura replied easily, finally looking up from the holopads and meeting Revan's eyes. "I just knew something was bothering Selvi, and you're much better at getting her back on her feet than I am."

Revan tilted his head forward in the barest of nods.

"Fair enough," he said evenly, leaning back slightly in the chair. "Since I'm all the way here and just did you a favor, though, how about you do something for me?"

"Name it," the Twi'lek said at once. "Anything to get me away from this inventory work; do you have any idea how much of our supplies the younglings and learners tear through every month? It's horrifying."

"Not nearly as horrifying as a swarm of starving younglings, that much I can promise you," Revan answered with a chuckle, before reaching for an empty holopad. He quickly tapped in the seven names he'd remembered, handing it back to Yuthura when he'd finished.

"Do you have any idea where any of those people are right now?"

The Knight's eyes gradually widened as she went down the list, and by the time she'd reached the end her mouth was open slightly in shock.

"Master Revan, these names are all Sith."

"I'm well aware of that," Revan said evenly.

Yuthura's sharp violet eyes spoke for her, leaving Revan to fill the silence again.

"I just need you to tell me if any of them are still alive. The rest of the Council's asked me to see if I can get any useful information out of my old soldiers, and I plan on trying."

Yuthura swept over the list one more time and shook her head, handing it back to the Master with a light sigh.

"I wish I had better news for you," she said, "but of those seven, four are dead. Out of the remaining three, I have no idea where the Seer is, but I know at the very least that you'll find the Strangler on Tatooine. Last I heard of the Shade, she was on Coruscant, but she could be anywhere by now."

"Thank you," Revan replied as he rose. "Good luck with the inventory, Yuthura. I'm sure Master Dorak will be most appreciative of your help."

The Twi'lek gave a snort and muttered something crass in her native tongue, but Revan decided to let the insult slide and left the room without another word.

As he walked back down the hall, the Master's heart was heavy and his mind was even more troubled than it had been during his earlier failed stab at meditation. Four of his most trusted soldiers were dead. And out of the three that were still breathing, one was nowhere to be found and one had hidden herself in a city that had more people than it did insects. That left Revan putting all of his hope in tracking down the Strangler on Tatooine, an assassin who would just as soon slit his throat as say hello.

But then again, that was exactly why he'd made the ornery Dug one of his chosen soldiers. Even if digging up that part of his past was a definite risk, it was a risk Revan had to take.

* * *

Arina made her way down into the underground section of the Enclave, heading with sure-footed strides towards the one place she knew she could always find solace when all else had failed her. Solace, and guidance. Guidance that might show her a way out of her bind, where her Master had left her still hopelessly entangled. But that was to be expected, Arina realized as she drew nearer to the Archives. After all, Bastila had Master Revan to lie next to at night; Arina shouldn't have expected her to know what to say to someone mourning a lost love.

But the Archives might sing a different tune; after all, they held millennia worth of history within their holocrons. Surely, someone else in the history of the Order had suffered as she had, and found a way to overcome it. The doors to the library opened with a faint whisper, and Arina stepped quickly into the first room. The padawan was so absorbed in trying to seek out an answer to her dilemma that it took her a few moments to realize that she wasn't alone.

"Hello, Selvi," she said courteously in greeting. The dark-haired Miraluka looked up from her holopad and smiled, rising from her seat and walking over to greet her friend and roommate in kind.

"Arina. What're you doing here, when it's so nice outside? Shouldn't you be taking arrogant Knights down a notch in the practice yards?"

"Not today." Arina replied to the familiar jest as evenly as she could, but it had still cut deeper than Selvi had intended. The Miraluka could tell something was off, and her smile shifted at once into a solicitous frown.

"What's wrong? Something happen on your mission?"

"I guess you could say that," Arina answered with a rueful chuckle, before looking over at the holopad her friend had been reading and changing the topic. "What're you reading?"

Sensing that she didn't want to talk about whatever was bothering her, Selvi pulled the holopad over to her with the Force and handed it to Arina.

"Just some old correspondences from the War, nothing exciting."

The green-eyed padawan read over the first three letters she saw and smiled sadly, handing the holopad back to Selvi.

"Your brother must have loved you very much," Arina said. "I'm sorry I never got a chance to know him."

"He was the kindest person I ever knew," the Miraluka said softly. "I guess that's why I was so shocked when he told me he was joining the war effort against the Mandalorians. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't hear of it. And now…" she gestured at the holopad in her hands, "this is all I have left of him."

"Haven't you ever thought of avenging his death?"

The words must have come out more pointedly than Arina had wanted, because her friend gave her a long look with those sightless eyes of hers before replying. Somehow, it made her reproaches even more penetrating.

"And how would I go about doing that, exactly?" the Miraluka asked. "He was murdered by Mandalorians on a diplomatic mission during the War. The ones who pulled the triggers are probably all dead by now, and holding a grudge against every living Mandalorian because of that seems a little extreme to me. Why do you ask?"

"I just assumed that if you lost someone close to you, the natural reaction would be to want revenge. Am I wrong?"

Selvi heard Revan's earlier words echoing in her head, and knew she had to tread carefully here.

"I wouldn't confuse revenge with closure," she said warily. "Blood for blood doesn't solve anything."

"If you knew the exact person who'd killed your brother," Arina countered slowly, intensity bleeding from every word, "would you be saying the same thing?"

The Miraluka felt her heart beating faster in her chest, and had to fight to stay calm. Something was very wrong here; she could see it in the turbulence of the Force currents flowing around her friend.

"Of course I would," Selvi insisted. "Why would I kill anyone for my brother's sake? It wouldn't bring him back to life, and some other Mandalorian would know the pain of losing a brother."

"And you wouldn't call that closure?" Arina pressed, desperate for at least one person to see things her way. Selvi looked long and hard at her friend, and when she spoke, the Miraluka sounded ten years older.

"I would call that a pain so deep I wouldn't wish it on another living soul, Arina. Regardless of who they are or what they've done, no one can deserve the pain of losing someone so close to them."

Arina sighed; she shouldn't have expected Selvi to understand where she was coming from either. The Miraluka had loved her brother dearly, but it was a completely different kind of bond than the one Arina had shared with Rhion. And where Selvi had no definite target to pin her anger on, Arina knew exactly who had been responsible for Rhion's murder.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," the green-eyed padawan answered wearily, her taste for holocrons soured. "Forget I said anything, okay?"

Selvi said nothing as Arina took her leave, walking from the Archives without looking back. Frustration was turning her gut in tighter and tighter knots with every step she took, and her vision was so tunneled by the time she reached her room that Arina had to fumble to get the lock open. Not even bothering to lock the door behind her, the padawan threw herself down on the bottom bunk bed and wept into her pillow.

She wept at the unfairness of it all. She wept at the fact that no one she had trusted to help her could guide her when she'd needed it the most. She wept that the bastard who had killed Rhion in cold blood right in front of her was being let go with what amounted to a full pardon. But most of all, she wept at her own weakness. She was too much of a coward to commit herself to vengeance, and too weak to obtain it in the end anyway. She wept until no more tears would come, and her tired eyes closed in sleep.

"You look terrible, kid."

Arina's eyes snapped open at the voice, bleary but still focused enough to see the outline of a face looking down at her. She was about to tell Selvi to give her five more minutes, when she realized that the person above her had silver hair, and not black. Hair that almost seemed to glow in the soft light of the room. Arina blinked a few more times in shock, expecting Selvi to show up at any moment. But rather than vanish, the person just became more and more vivid, until there was no mistaking his identity.

"Rhion?" she said hesitantly, afraid that once the word left her lips the illusion would be broken. Surely it was an illusion; she'd held her Master's dead body in her arms, she'd buried it under the acrid soil of Nar Shaddaa with her own two hands.

The Echani laughed, his gray eyes sparkling with wry amusement.

"The one and only," he said as Arina forced herself up and out of bed. "At least you still remember who I am, that's a good si—"

Rhion's words were cut off as his old student threw herself into his arms and kissed him, almost bowling him over in the process. Arina held it for as long as she could, before breaking off and resting her head in the crook of the Echani's shoulder.

"I miss you," she said thickly, still trying to come to terms with what she was experiencing. Her mind knew Rhion was dead, but her heart didn't seem to care one way or the other. "I miss you so much."

"I know," Rhion said gently, reciprocating the embrace. "And I'm sorry. I never meant to leave you behind, I hope you know that."

Arina held her silence for as long as she could, savoring the moment, but the time came that she had to resign herself to the truth all the same.

"This isn't real," she said, moving away from the Echani just enough to look into his eyes, "is it?"

"Isn't it?" Rhion parried, raising an eyebrow. "All things are possible through the Force, Arina. Death is nothing more than another state of being."

"Then this…" Arina stepped back, looking around at the room and recognizing the old home they'd shared on Nar Shaddaa, "this is a Force vision?"

"Of course," Rhion said smoothly, taking Arina's hand in his own. "I sensed you were lost, confused and angry, and so I came to you. After all, what kind of teacher would I be if I couldn't even help my student with something like this?"

His words filled Arina with a sense of contentment she hadn't felt in so very long, as she achingly realized how much she'd really missed her old teacher.

"What should I do, Master?" she asked him, halfway to pleading in her stress. "I tried to put you behind me like the Jedi urged, but I just can't let you go. I need closure. I want revenge."

"Then take it."

Arina paused for a few heartbeats, not sure she'd heard correctly.

"Pardon?" Surely it couldn't be that easy.

"What's stopping you from taking revenge?" Rhion repeated, his gray eyes shifting from jocular to deadly serious. "It's the simplest thing in the world to do. Just devote yourself to your studies and training; don't waste your time with anything else. Once you obtain enough power, all that remains is to walk up to Jerissk and stab him through the heart."

Something in the Echani's voice made a shiver run through Arina's spine; whether it was from fear or excitement or both, she couldn't be sure.

"Wouldn't that get me kicked out of the Order, though?" she asked, unwilling to believe that something so irrevocable could really be so simple. Rhion shrugged.

"Do you really think the Jedi would mind?" he asked. "That Trandoshan is more a Sith than he'll ever be a Jedi, no matter how hard he tries to cover up his past. I'm sure the Jedi Council would be willing to forgive you this transgression, especially if it means taking care of a problem that they won't dirty their own hands with."

"The Jedi don't kill their prisoners," Arina said, repeating the words Bastila often told her with more than a hint of bitterness.

Rhion smiled, but then he winced and groaned unexpectedly, clutching his forehead.

"What is it?" Arina asked, eyes wide with concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Rhion said as calmly as he could. He waved his former student off and straightened up, seeming to shimmer and fade in the light as he did so. "It just appears as though I've reached my limit for now, and we must part. But don't worry… if you ever need me again, I will come to you."

And then he was gone, leaving Arina alone again among the memories they had both shared.

_Arina? Arina! Are you all right?_

Her eyes snapped open again, and this time it _was_ Selvi who was hunched over her, gently shaking her shoulder.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Arina said hazily. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing on my end," her roommate said guardedly, looking at her as skeptically as someone with no eyes could. "You were just talking in your sleep. It sounded like you were having a nightmare."

"A nightmare?" Arina shook her head. "No, not at all. I was having a Force vision." She pushed herself out of the bed and stretched with a sigh, smiling as she grabbed up her lightsaber and walked to the door. "It must be great for you Miraluka, being able to have those whenever you want to." She opened the door, looking back over her shoulder as she walked through it. "I'm going to go train. It is a beautiful day outside after all, right?"

Selvi watched her friend go and frowned. She wasn't quite sure what to make of what had just happened, but she knew in her gut that it was nothing good. She'd seen the flow of energy to and from Arina as she'd been sleeping and having this 'vision', and it was nothing like a normal interaction with the Living Force. Visions were always reciprocal, with both sides reaching out and forming a mutual connection. But here, it had felt more like a tainted, outside presence had slithered its way into Arina's mind and controlled the entire thing.

And the way her temperament had changed was also very disconcerting; to go from so upset to so content as quickly as she had wasn't natural. Arina was definitely hiding something, and it cut deeper than a lack of trust in her best friend. This was something serious. And the longer Selvi thought about what Arina had said earlier, the more serious it became.

Those words, the stubborn insistence on repaying pain with pain, and strife with strife, were the same words she'd heard from countless other Jedi who had gone on to fall under the banners of the Sith Empire. Under Revan it had been ideological at the very least, but under Malak it had been nothing more than an instinctive desire for retribution and bloodletting.

The Enclave here on Dantooine still bore the scars of that desire, and several of the graves dug after the Sith bombardment belonged to Selvi's friends.

The Miraluka sat down on the floor and shifted seamlessly into meditation, opening herself up to the Force and trying to trace the dark flow that had been here back to its source. She came up with nothing; the link, whatever it had been, was already severed completely. But regardless, Selvi knew she had to keep an eye on her friend. Something was corrupting Arina, the Miraluka was certain of that… and she wasn't about to lose another friend to the Dark Side if she could help it.

* * *

…

…

**A/N:** Heinously long delay is heinously long. I'm really, really sorry I didn't return to work on this sooner, but I had a lot I needed to plot out for the chapters to come. Getting this chapter to flow right was also a lot harder at first than I thought it would be, so I let it sit for a while and came back to it. I like to think that made it better in the end, but I'll leave that judgment up to you.

Thanks go out to everyone who's left reviews so far! it's an awesome motivator, and in fact it was a review from **Hachichiyyin** that got me back to working on the story with a vengeance. If you all would be so kind, please take a moment to drop a **review **of your own—it truly means a lot, and does help me to write faster. Sometimes school and life intrudes to the contrary, but every bit of motivation counts. My apologies again for taking so long with this, and thank you very much for continuing to follow the story regardless. I promise you, the best is yet to come.

Jazz.

p.s.—Thanks must also be given in abundance to **JasoTheArtisan**, whose mastery over the art of beta'ing is exceeded only by his zest for kung-fu treachery!


	10. Struggle

**Legacies**

**Chapter 10:** Struggle

* * *

"You want me to _what_?"

"Are you the one who's going senile here?" Jolee prodded. "I believe I said I want you to move that rock there five feet to the left. Don't make me repeat myself again, boy."

"This is pointless, old man," the Trandoshan hissed, drawing an offended grunt from his teacher.

"Sure it has a point, or I wouldn't have suggested it!" Jolee countered, his eyebrows bristling with indignation. "I was fighting Sith on Yavin IV while you were still crying out in the middle of the night for your momma.

"If I know one thing, it's how to whip trainees like you into shape. So why don't you stop sassing me for five minutes and think about why I'd want you to move this rock. Or even better, don't even think about it and just do what I tell you. The sooner you figure out how to do that, the better off we'll be."

Jerissk bit his tongue and turned his attention back to the rock in question, channeling his anger into trying to move it. When he got it done, maybe the old man would finally stop jabbering. The Trandoshan could feel the Force moving around the rock clear enough, but when he tried to reach out and grab hold of the energy it slipped right through his fingers.

"Shit," he cursed, trying again and accidentally forcing it so hard that he crushed the rock into dust and created a small crater in the ground beneath it.

"Well, that's a start," Jolee said with a smirk, "but not exactly what I was going for." He picked up another rock and tossed it into the crater, this one bigger than its predecessor. Jerissk shot him a murderous glare, but swallowed his anger and took a few calming breaths. Pausing to regain his balance, the Trandoshan thought back over why exactly the old man might have structured his training the way he had. Because as annoying as Jolee could be, he certainly wasn't an idiot.

The training to dodge blasts of lightning had been about evasiveness, but also about prediction: being able to tell by the movement of the Force currents where the blast was going to go before it happened. But what would that have to do with moving a rock over the ground?

"Would you mind at least doing _something_ while you try an' puzzle this out?" Jolee called over, breaking Jerissk's concentration in half. "There're only a few people I'd consider spending my last moments alive with, and you're not one of them."

The Trandoshan growled in frustration but said nothing, refusing to rise to the bait. Instead, he forced himself to focus and tried once more to grip the rock with the Force. Jerissk could feel the flow around the rock, and reached out to grasp the currents as they passed by. Taking his time and studying how they moved, he shifted his hold at the last second and smiled wide as the currents slipped right into his grip rather than drifting away from him. Keeping his focus and tugging up on the currents, Jerissk was so glad to see the rock rising up into the air that he almost lost his old on it. It wobbled, but in the end the rock stayed aloft—

Until another rock flew in out of nowhere and sent it crashing down to the ground.

The Trandoshan stared sharply over at Jolee, seeing the smug grin on his face. His orange eyes narrowed to slits. The weight of the glare wasn't lost on the old Jedi, and his face took on a hurt look.

"You think that was _me_?" Jolee asked. "Why would I ever want to do something like that? Clearly it was the rock's fault, not mine."

Jerissk frowned, finding himself weighing the odds of his survival if he fought this old man seriously. In the end he decided against it on account of only having one arm, but it was a close thing indeed. Part of the Trandoshan wanted to scream, but he refused to give the old bastard the satisfaction of seeing him break. He was going to move this rock five feet, and then he was going to sling it right in Jolee Bindo's smug face.

He got a grip on the rock again, and this time it came easier than it had before. In contrast to using brute force as the Sith teachings encouraged to bend the Force to his will, simply moving in accordance with the natural flow of the Force made it much easier to interact with.

Lifting his rock into the air again, Jerissk made sure to keep his mind open enough to sense when Jolee's next attack was coming. The precaution paid off, as he sensed the mild disturbance early enough to move his rock out of the way of the old man's projectile. Jolee's rock stopped dead in midair and looped back around, but Jerissk had assumed another attack was coming and had already moved his rock out of the way. Being able to feel the natural push and pull of the Force so readily was exhilarating, and it wasn't long before the Trandoshan's rock had found its way to its destination, despite Jolee's best efforts to knock it down.

"Not bad, kid," the Jedi mused with a genuine smile, "not bad at all. Looks like you're getting the hang of it again at last. Easier to manipulate the Force when you're not fighting it, ain't it?"

"Yeah," Jerissk grudgingly had to agree, "it is. So, what's next?"

"There's a game younglings play to sharpen their sense of the Force," Jolee began, picking a rock up with the Force and motioning for his student to do the same. "It's called 'Push-Feather'. Basically, two younglings stand across from each other, and each of 'em tries to push the other off balance using the Force. But seeing as how you and I are grown men, I think we should make it a little more interesting."

The rock in front of Jerissk came zipping towards him before the Trandoshan could so much as blink, and he knew there wouldn't be time to dodge it normally. Reaching out instinctively through the Force, he moved his own rock and deflected Jolee's just before it made contact.

"Good, very good!" the old Jedi complemented, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "Keep it up!"

The rock flew around erratically, weaving and cutting almost like it had a mind of its own. Jerissk knew that the point of the game was not to think, and simply to trust the flow of the Force around him. He closed his eyes, feeling for the movements in the currents and acting accordingly. Eventually he would have to be able to do it with his eyes open, but the Trandoshan looked at the whole process like he was re-learning how to walk. One step at a time, the Force would open itself back up to him.

Suddenly a sharp pain stabbed through his head, and Jerissk's eyes flew open in surprise. Jolee was no longer standing in front of him; the old Jedi had moved to the right and struck from a position the Trandoshan hadn't been expecting.

"Don't just pay attention to your immediate surroundings," the teacher cautioned. "Your enemy ain't gonna be standing still while you're fighting them."

Jerissk didn't get mad; taking a few deep, calming breaths, he lifted his rock back up and repeated his mantra in his head.

One step at a time.

* * *

_He knew something was wrong long before the adjutant came rushing into his office to inform him of the disturbance; Revan had felt it rippling through the Force. The Jedi was already on his feet and walking towards the door of his cabin when it slid open before him._

"_General, sir," the messenger said suddenly, snapping to attention. "There's been—"_

"_I know; walk with me." Revan cut him off, waving his hand impatiently. "Where?"_

"_There's a group of soldiers assaulting a young refugee girl they found in the engineering bay's cargo hold, sir," the messenger said quickly as Revan sped up his pace, falling into stride beside him without losing a step._

"_Not for long," the General said tersely, casting a sidelong glance at the messenger; a Lieutenant junior-grade, he saw from the bar on his shoulders, and no older than Silvas Rahn. He'd heard this one was something of a prodigy, but even for prodigies such a rapid rise in rank was almost unheard-of. "Congratulations on the promotion." _

"_Thank you, sir," the Lieutenant said. "But to be honest, it was a fluke more than anything else. I just did what any other soldier would have done; the circumstances were just atypical."_

"_Don't be so modest; it does you no good to downplay your own merits in the middle of a war," the General replied evenly as they approached the doors of the cargo bay in question. "Thank you for informing me of the situation here, Lieutenant Tarkin," Revan continued as he prepared himself for the possibility of a battle waiting beyond the heavy doors. "You may return to your post; I expect a full report on exactly what got you that promotion by lights out tonight."_

_The crackling of the Jedi's blue lightsaber as it ignited to life was all Tarkin needed to hear before he took his leave, snapping off a crisp salute and taking the hallway to the right. Revan ripped the door open with the Force, stepping into the cargo hold and hoping that the girl was all right as he prepared himself for a possible duel._

_What the General had expected and what he got, however, were two wildly different things. He could see the girl huddled and shaking over in the corner, but the soldiers who had been accosting her were nowhere nearby. They were sprawled out on floor in various stages of injury, and Revan could see from just a cursory glance that one of them had been given multiple compound fractures and another was suffering from burns that had been delivered by the blade of a lightsaber._

"_You're late, Revan," a gravelly voice spoke out from the right of the carnage. The Jedi looked over and saw who had spoken, a smile creeping over his face in spite of the lack of respect the speaker had given him. "Missed out on the party, such as it was."_

"_You seem to have handled it quite well yourself, Sebulga," the General said as he approached his comrade and fellow Jedi Knight, kneeling to be on eye-level with the Dug. "You have my thanks."_

"_Save them for someone else," Sebulga said sharply, snorting through his large nostrils in disdain. "I was just doing what anyone with a shred of decency would've done." The Dug snorted again, turning away from Revan and scooting his way towards the door. _

"_The next time you kneel down in front of me," he said in parting, "General or no, I'm going to kick your teeth out. The last thing I need right now is people suddenly treating me respectably because I'm carrying a lightsaber around. I don't know what I'd do with myself."_

"_Fair enough," Revan said with a laugh as he rose to his feet. Sebulga had been a padawan beside Revan at the Academy on Coruscant, and although the Dug's prickly demeanor had been off-putting at first, the two of them had grown into grudging friends over the years. He was someone Revan was glad to have fighting at his side, considering the enemy they were facing. _

_Turning his attention to the shivering girl in the corner, Revan walked over to her and knelt once again._

"_Are you all right?" he asked softly, and the girl stopped shaking. She looked up at him, her wide blue eyes unafraid even as her body bore the bruises of her earlier 'interrogation'. She nodded defiantly, and Revan held out his hand to her. _

_She took it, and suddenly the ship around them shimmered and melted into nothingness. Only Revan and the girl remained, and the Jedi saw that a dark line had appeared across the girl's neck._

"_No regrets," she rasped, and then she was gone._

The vision ended and Revan's eyes snapped open, pupils dilated wide as his mind lurched to catch up to his body. The door to his room slid open just as the Master rose shakily to his feet, revealing the only other person in the Enclave that had a key to his room.

"What's wrong?" Bastila asked as soon as she saw Revan's state, but he waved her off as she walked towards him.

"Just the backlash from a Force vision, that's all," he said, a slight rasp to his voice. "It'll pass in a second. What's up?"

"You're not the only person who feels backlash from your visions, you know," the Knight said, and it was only then that the Master could see the beads of sweat on Bastila's forehead. "I can't make out anything distinct, but the emotions come through loud and clear. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Revan insisted. Bastila looked past him and saw the two full traveling containers resting on the floor, her gray eyes hardening in suspicion.

"Going somewhere?" she asked pointedly, and her lover sighed.

"Tatooine," he said almost wearily. "The Council's asked me to see if I can get some up-to-date information on the Sith's movements from some of my old soldiers, and Yuthura dug up a lead for me there."

"Are you sure they can be trusted?" Bastila pressed, but softening the tone of her voice as she did so. Revan had clearly been under a lot of pressure lately, and the last thing she wanted to do was add to it. The Master nodded.

"This one can," he answered firmly. "I'm sure of that much if I'm sure of anything."

"And why's that? Why would someone you turned your back on still be loyal to you? It's thanks to you the Sith are in shambles, after all."

Revan gave a small smile, his eyes slipping out of focus as they peered back into the past.

"His loyalty was never to the Sith," he said assuredly. "It was always to me, and me alone. And it's not the kind of loyalty that will sway easily, either. That's why I chose him to be in the Wraiths to begin with."

Bastila's eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the unfamiliar name.

"The Wraiths?" she asked. "Who were they?"

"A special group of spies I created within the Sith, whose identities were secret to everyone but me. Not even Malak knew about them, even if I'm sure he did have his suspicions from time to time. The lead on Tatooine was one of them. Another was someone I'm sure you knew; she was in your class at the Academy on Coruscant. Dersu'u'Zala."

Bastila's expression snapped from puzzled to shocked in an instant, stunned into silence by the name. When she finally spoke again, her voice was incredulous.

"But she… that's not possible. Zala was my roommate; she even became a full Jedi Knight. She couldn't have been a Sith, she fought right next to me in the attack on your ship!"

"Because that's exactly where I wanted her to be," the Master answered simply, his eyes betraying nothing of his feelings. "I needed to be sure you would reach me alive. Dead, there was no way I could have turned you to the dark side, and your Battle Meditation was far too precious a gift to let go to waste."

It was only the plain regret seeping into Revan's voice that kept Bastila from fearing that he'd slipped back towards some shred of his old self, but the revelation that one of her most trusted friends growing up among the Jedi had been a deep-cover mole was still chilling.

"I never knew," she said hollowly, shaken to the point of needing to sit down. "I ate with her, trained with her, confided in her, slept in the same _room_ with her, and she was in your pocket the entire time?"

Revan nodded.

"If you'd been able to figure that out, she wouldn't have been a very good spy at all, princess… let alone one of my best."

"I suppose that makes sense," Bastila admitted, regaining her mental balance and rising to her feet again. "Besides, it's not like that matters anymore: Zala died on your flagship during the assault that day."

Revan sighed and picked up the two cargo containers, walking towards the door and stopping when he was abreast with his loved one.

"It wasn't my decision to turn her," he said gently. "But for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

The Jedi kept walking, but only got a few more steps forward before Bastila's hand gripped his forearm and held him in place.

Revan stood still for a few heartbeats, relaxing his grips on the containers in his hands and letting the Force cushion their fall back to the ground. He turned, completing the embrace Bastila had begun once they were facing each other again. The Master held his Knight gently against him, torn between wanting to protect her from the conflict that was sure to come and knowing that they would both have their own paths to travel. Revan could only hope that, when the dust settled from the last aftershock of his old empire's collapse, Bastila would still be standing strong amidst the wreckage.

Waiting for him to return to her, as he had once waited for her.

Revan pulled back just far enough to look her in the eyes, an ache in his chest as he realized in that moment just how much he would miss Bastila if she vanished from his life forever. He leaned forward and kissed her, hoping that the act could convey how he felt better than words. She returned the kiss with a need that Revan had been feeling from her more and more as of late, and it gave him pause. Searching his own turbulent emotions, a sobering discovery smacked him square in the face:

He had been an incredibly self-absorbed bastard these past few months. Thinking back, he could see each missed moment he could have spent with Bastila spread out like a hundred glittering, fleeting, lost opportunities. He'd told himself that his work was more important, that the needs of the Order came first, that the Sith were too dangerous to be ignored in any way…

But those had all been lies. Lies Revan had told himself to edge around the truth he was afraid to face: that he really didn't deserve any of this, the illusion of peace the Jedi had given him when they'd rebuilt his mind. And he certainly didn't deserve Bastila, who had suffered so much as a result of his direct actions.

"Stop it."

The Master blinked out of his thoughts and looked down at Bastila, who was staring right back up at him with eyes that were as open and vulnerable as he'd ever seen them.

"Why do you keep dragging yourself down like this?" she asked earnestly. "And don't even try to deny it; I can read the guilt right on your face. Why can't you just forgive yourself? What do I have to do to reach you?" she finished pleadingly, searching his face for some kind of answer.

Revan could hear the pain in her voice, but shook his head all the same.

"You gave me a second chance," he replied softly, "and that alone was more than I could have ever asked for. But a few months of good deeds can't ever counter-balance the years I was the Dark Lord of the Sith."

"Even though you saved the entire galaxy in the process?" Bastila pressed, unwilling to lose the argument. "What do you think you'll have to do to atone for your sins, if defeating Malak wasn't enough?"

"Stopping him was just covering up my old mistakes," Revan countered wearily. "If I'd never fallen, he wouldn't have followed me."

"All right; fine," Bastila sighed, exasperated. "If saving the Republic from complete annihilation twice in half a lifetime isn't going to convince you that you're not a terrible person, I don't know what will."

The Master arched an eyebrow at that.

"Twice?"

"The Mandalorian Wars, remember?" Bastila prompted, her voice gaining an edge. "You single-handedly held Mandalore's armies back from the core of Republic space and ended the conflict. Or are you so focused on drowning yourself in your own guilt that you can't even admit you were a Jedi before you became a Sith?"

Revan was taken aback by the sharpness of his loved one's words, but after a few heartbeats his mouth widened in a tired, but genuine smile.

"You're never going to give up on me," he said, "are you?"

"Never," Bastila affirmed with a smile of her own. "Now," she continued, bringing one of her hands up to rest against Revan's cheek, "about this trip of yours…"

"Hmmm?"

"Don't you think it could wait until tomorrow?"

Revan's smile lost its tiredness, his eyes brightening mischievously as he picked up on the tone in Bastila's voice.

"As a matter of fact, princess," he said as he closed the distance between them again, "I think it can."

The Jedi let himself relax into the warmth of another kiss, this one completely unfettered by guilt. The Sith had taken almost everything away from him, but Revan wasn't going to let them have Bastila. Not again. She was his, and his alone.

His salvation.

* * *

Arina stood right inside the door of the training room, waiting for the other padawans going through exercises to clear out. She wanted to be alone for this. She'd tried running through the list of sword exercises that Bastila had given her out on the open-air training grounds, but it hadn't been long before Arina had tired of those. Her blood was up, and slicing through air wasn't going to do anything to help her regain peace of mind. She had to work out her frustrations on something tangible, and it was that desire that had brought the padawan to the droid training room.

It was the closest the Jedi would let their students get to actual combat, and even then the use of lightsabers was prohibited in favor of vibroblades. The standard reasoning was that droids were expensive to replace, but Arina knew that the Jedi were smart enough to not give their pupils any chance to taste the power of the Dark Side; power that she now knew came as easily as breathing in the heat of battle. The surge of power she'd felt during her fight with the Katarn in the Shadowlands had terrified her at first, but the more she'd thought about it in hindsight, the more she could see how useful that kind of power could be.

If it could be controlled, of course. And it was that need for control that had brought her here. Walking over to the nearby control panel, the padawan hesitated in thought for a few heartbeats before deciding to give herself a real challenge. Telling the cages to release the maximum number of droids they could for a single round of training, Arina stepped into the middle of the floor and held a vibroblade out in front of her, waiting.

The first bolt of energy came from her right, and she spun to avoid it with little more than a slight shift in her footing. Knowing just how long the window to retaliate was, the padawan lunged forward and swung the blade's edge down onto the droid's sensor, shorting it out. There was no time to relax, though, as the other droids didn't hesitate to turn the training area into a swarm of stunning bolts.

Arina swerved and spun through the small gaps in the volleys, giving herself up to the Force around her and relishing the feeling of her adrenaline rising higher and higher. Her frustration built into a powerful wave, and she rode it until it crested and sent her careening into the roiling sea of power that was the Dark Side of the Force.

The sound of numerous shorted-out droids buzzing in unison brought Arina slowly back to the present, but the rush she was experiencing hadn't dissipated at all. The power of raw emotion still enveloped her like a fog, pulsing and ebbing and seemingly waiting for a catalyst to give it form; to give it purpose.

It didn't have to wait very long at all.

The presence began as little more than a flicker on the edge of perception, but it was still intense enough for Arina's heightened senses to latch onto it. It took no longer than a blink for the source of the Force disturbance to become clear, its signature one that the padawan knew far too well.

Jerissk.

Arina all but sprinted out of the training room, leaving the twitching droids and borrowed vibroblade behind her without a second thought. The halls of the Academy were deserted, which was just as well: she couldn't afford to be distracted now, not when she felt so keen and alive for the first time in years. For the first time since Rhion had been taken from her. As she stepped back out into the light of the sun, her senses sharpened even further and the padawan could feel the Force flowing around her, rushing and twisting in endless currents. Directing her own cloud of anger out at the raw energy, Arina tried bending the unbridled Force to her own will…

And felt euphoria so intense it almost knocked her off of her feet entirely. The energy thrummed with life around her, begging to be released once more. Letting it flow through her body uninhibited, Arina felt the Force coursing into her fingertips and let it go. The result was a powerful arc of lightning, blasting outward and leaving a seared scorch-mark on the grass. The padawan looked at her hand as if seeing it for the first time, awed by her own display of power. She hadn't been able to re-create Force Lightning since she'd shot a few weak bolts at Jerissk on reflex so long ago, and even then she hadn't been in conscious control of it.

Reaching out again, Arina harnessed another current and channeled it into her legs, using the Force to boost her speed. Running without feeling any fatigue whatsoever was exhilarating, and the connection she felt to the Force was much clearer than it had been in the past. She could feel it bolstering her muscles, reinforcing each individual fiber strand as it worked to move her legs in stride after stride. It was better than any drug, and felt more natural than breathing.

She had been so caught up in the sensations of her new connection to the Force that Arina almost failed to notice how close Jerissk's Force signature had become; at the speed she was running, she would be within sight of him in a little under half a minute. Letting the Force current in her legs relax, the padawan slowed her pace to a jog and then to nothing, just in time to find cover behind a large rock nearby where Jerissk seemed to be training. The Trandoshan was lifting and moving a large boulder around him in the air, his single arm looking oddly relaxed as it moved from side to side in tune with the rock.

Arina could feel her hatred simmering as she watched Jerissk, and the angrier she got the more intense her bloodlust became. Her hand moved with a mind of its own, inching towards the lightsaber at her hip and drawing it from its holster. She was close; so close she could smell the blood that would soon be in the air—

"Looking for something?"

Arina's head snapped around so hard at the unexpected voice that she almost winced in pain, and probably would have had it not been for the Force buoying her. Jolee Bindo was standing to her right, looking at her in bemusement.

"You could say that," the padawan answered evasively, but being sure to hold the old man's gaze. "Why, is there a problem?"

"Only if you're here to make one," Jolee countered, his voice steely and containing no trace of his usual humor. "So let me ask you again: you looking for something?"

The two of them stood silent for a few tense heartbeats, and it was Arina who caved first.

"No," she said calmly, turning and walking away from the impromptu training ground, "I found it."

Jolee watched her go, his expression never relaxing even after the padawan's figure had faded away into the distance.

"She wanted to fight," Jerissk's voice chimed in sharply a few moments later. "Why'd you hold her back?"

Jolee's frown became laced with sudden melancholy, his dark eyes looking somewhere far back in the past.

"If you can't tell that much, kid," he said heavily, "you still have a lot to learn. I've seen far too many people struggling with their demons like Arina is right now—all it takes is one push too hard in the wrong direction, and they're lost forever. I'll have to tell Bastila to keep her eyes on that one, next chance I get."

Jerissk eyed his teacher intently, the look in his orange eyes inscrutable.

"She's going to fall," he said lowly. "I know what a Sith looks like, old man."

Jolee's mouth set back into a hard frown, and he sighed.

"Maybe so," he admitted at last, seeming for a moment to be twenty years older. "But if my years have taught me anything, it's that very few falls are permanent."

The Trandoshan said nothing more, walking back over to the large boulder and lifting it up into the air again. Jerissk knew that not everyone could or would be like Revan, but he also knew better than to make that point to Jolee.

The old man had suffered much, that was clear, and Jerissk wasn't about to trample on what thin hopes remained to him. He owed his teacher that much, at least.

* * *

...

...

**A/N:** Whew! Sorry that took so long again; I would have liked to have gotten this chapter out to you all sooner, but exams got in the way. That, and the middle scene was much harder to get right than I thought it'd be. All the same, I hope the length and quality of the chapter at least make up for the delay.

**Reviews** are, as always, highly appreciated, and keep me writing when I would otherwise do things like school-work. Huge thanks go out to **Grinja**, **ApparentlyInsane **and **Gwynedde** for their reviews last chapter; y'all are awesome.

Huge thanks also go out once again to **JasoTheArtisan**, a beta so awesome he makes Frank Sinatra look like a hobo. Go check out his stuff if any of you are fans of the anime/manga _Bleach_: it's all amazing.


	11. Brothers

**Legacies **

**Chapter 11: **Brothers

* * *

Sebulga groaned as he walked out from the cool, dark interior of his small house into the blistering heat of the Tatooine suns. No matter how long he lived on this pitted rock of a planet, the Dug knew he would never get used to this weather. Sebulga set his mouth in a practiced frown and loped on down the dusty main road of Anchorhead, weaving through the foot-traffic on his way to the cantina.

The plain hilt hanging at the Dug's waist by a simple leather cord was one of the few things he had left to remind him of his past, outside of a few scars and a head full of memories and regrets. He'd cut himself off from the Sith as soon as Malak had turned on Revan, usurping the position of Dark Lord without an ounce of the intelligence or willpower it took to occupy that throne. Of course, anyone who followed Revan would have seemed inadequate, but those who knew just how rash the Malak was understood there was no way he could hope to step out from Revan's shadow. His ultimate defeat on the Star Forge had been proof of that, and Sebulga dearly regretted not having been at Revan's side to watch the traitor fall.

But those days were long behind him: Revan was a Jedi Master now, and if his progress was any indication, before too long he would have a seat among the High Council on Coruscant. The Dug smiled to himself as he recalled their days at the Temple there, learning as younglings—to think that Revan of all people would sit on one of the chairs in that esteemed circle made Sebulga certain that the Force had a wicked sense of humor. But no humor to spare for Revan's soldiers, even those that had been the most loyal to him of all. Maybe the Seer had been right after all; if they had taken the fight to Malak after they'd been betrayed, maybe the Wraiths could have defeated him and taken the Sith for their own.

Not like any of that mattered now, though. The Seer was dead, as far as he knew; struck down by Malak's conscripted Blademaster. And the Shade, the only Wraith beside himself that Sebulga knew to be alive, was doing an excellent job of living up to her namesake. The Dug chuckled as he entered the cantina and sidled up to his usual spot at the bar, digging for the small bit of humor he could find at the sight of the Dark Lord Revan's most prized warriors being reduced to wandering, aimless vagrants.

"What'll it be, sir?" the bartender's raspy voice cut into the Dug's thoughts, and he gave the man an impatient glare.

"Almost a year and a half I've been coming here," Sebulga growled, "and I've always gotten the same thing. Keep fishing for tips with that fake courtesy of yours and I'll kick your teeth in."

The bartender scowled at his most regular patron, clearly weighing the benefits of a consistent customer against his desire to shoot the Dug in the face. But it wasn't long before the man reminded himself of who Sebulga's friends were on Tatooine, and the quarrel ended the way it always did: a cool drink in front of the Dug, and half of what was owed chucked contemptuously onto the bar.

"Be glad I'm even giving you that," Sebulga grunted, downing his drink in one smooth gulp. Pausing before asking for a second round, he sighed and turned his head slightly to the right.

"Can I just get one drink in peace?"

"Not when you're having it on my credits, you can't," the smooth voice of Tyron the Twi'lek slithering over as he took up the seat next to his business partner. "Think it's such a good idea to go into the race seeing double, friend?"

Sebulga's hand twitched toward his lightsaber, but he stopped it and curled it into a fist.

"I'm getting tired of eating all the shit people are feeding me around here," he said lowly. "Keep it up and I'll move on to somewhere else. I hear the tracks on Manaan are particularly nice this time of year."

The practiced charm evaporated from Tyron's face, and he scowled at the Dug.

"You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I?" The Dug quipped back with a smile, his eyes flashing briefly with the intensity of the commander he had once been. "Feel free to keep pushing me, if you're so sure. Otherwise, save your nagging for after the race."

The Twi'lek held Sebulga's gaze for a few heartbeats, but then he wavered and broke like the Dug knew he would. He'd learned a lot in his time serving with Revan in the War, and one thing he'd never forgotten was how easy it was to take the measure of a man through their eyes. Revan's had been unflinching even in the darkest of times; Tyron quailed the moment a blaster barrel was resting on his temple.

Sebulga knew he needed to get out of here, before he forgot who he used to be.

"Be at the track on time," the Twi'lek spat in a weak attempt to salvage the conversation in his favor, "or I'll dock your cut."

"Sure you will," Sebulga muttered, too amused at the posturing to be angry. It was an odd sensation; he found himself wanting nothing more than to be back in the Mandalorian Wars, fighting at Revan's side in the thick of battle against numbers far larger than their own.

Maybe then he'd actually feel something again.

"Fah, this is pointless," he admonished himself, tapping his glass twice on the bar in request for a refill. "I sound like a doddering old woman. What do you think of me now, brother?"

"The same thing I thought of you back at the Academy," a level voice tinged with fondness and amusement answered as a cloaked figure moved to take the place Tyron had vacated. "You need something to do with yourself, or you'll end up burning this place to the ground out of boredom."

Sebulga gave a genuine chuckle at that, passing his second drink over to his visitor and tapping for a third.

"That one's on me."

"Thanks."

The Dug slugged back his drink as soon as it got refilled, tapping the bar impatiently for another refill.

"The answer is no, by the way."

If the visitor in the cloak was nonplussed, he didn't show it.

"I haven't even asked you a question yet."

"And I'm saving you the trouble of asking it, Revan," Sebulga growled, finishing off his next round. "And take that hood off; it looks ridiculous."

The Jedi did so, now looking over at his friend with an unobstructed gaze and meeting his sunken eyes without flinching.

"Are you really that sure about what I was going to ask you?"

"Name one other reason why you would possibly pay me a visit out of the blue like this."

"Because you're my best friend," Revan said sincerely, and Sebulga chuckled.

"You must really be desperate if you're playing that card," he said. "Why do you even need to get the Wraiths back together, when you have the Jedi behind you?"

"This isn't something the Jedi can handle themselves, Sebulga," Revan insisted. "They're still drained from the battle with Malak, and the surviving Sith know that. I came to you first because I trust you the most out of all my old soldiers. If I'm going to pull the Wraiths back together, I need you there with me."

"What, all two of us?" Sebulga said, still dismissive even as Revan's entreaties began to eat away at his stubbornness. It had been a long, long time since he'd seen his old friend drop his guard this low. "And that's assuming I can even find Zala, which is highly unlikely. If I can't, it's just me."

"Still, there's no one I'd rather have watching my back."

Sebulga paused just long enough to down another shot.

"Not even Shan?"

Revan's calm finally cracked at that, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't play the idiot with me, Revan," the Dug countered. "You know exactly what I mean."

"She has nothing to do with this, Sebulga," the Jedi said forcefully, and his friend let out a sharp laugh.

"She has everything to do with this," Sebulga grunted, but declined to elaborate further when Revan gave him the chance. Silence settled between the two old friends, and it wasn't long before nostalgia crept in to fill the void.

"Remember Tomara Kalas?"

The Dug drained another drink as Revan did the same, grunting derisively as he put the glass back down.

"I'll never forget that girl," he mused, his eyes looking back through the years and coming to rest on the form of their old classmate. "By the stars, she was gorgeous. Only person I've ever seen lead you around like a moon-eyed kath pup, that one."

"It wasn't nearly that bad—" Revan began to counter, before a level stare from his friend cut him off. "Fine," he relented, "you're right. It was bad."

"I tried to warn you."

"You did."

"But you always had a soft spot for women like her."

Revan drained another shot.

"Still do," he said with a smile, "truth be told."

Sebulga chuckled.

"Damn shame she got kicked out of the Order when she took the fall for you." He paused to take his own drink. "Didn't seem to hit you too hard, through. You were right back at it three months into the War."

The mirth drained out of Revan's eyes at that, replaced with melancholy, and the Dug silently cursed his blunder. He knew exactly whom his friend was thinking about now, and it would lead nowhere good.

"Riyalla," the Jedi said softly. His friend sighed.

"I kept warning you," Sebulga said as sympathetically as he could manage, "but you never listened. Not when it counted, anyway."

"I know," Revan conceded. "But you still looked out for me regardless, even after all that. That's why I need you with me if the Wraiths are going to gather again, Sebulga."

The Dug slugged back another shot. He tapped the glass on the bar once, and then again, letting the glass rock back and forth slightly in his loosened grip. The glass tapped the bar again, harder this time. The next tap was lighter, followed by another light tap and then another. When the next tap came down hard, Revan felt his free hand clench involuntarily into a fist against the cool surface of the bar. He knew what that rhythm meant, and it sent a tendril of doubt snaking up his spine.

Sebulga drained another shot and sighed loudly, letting his eyes drift up to the ceiling. It was a gesture Revan was all too familiar with; the Dug had a tendency to retreat deep within himself as he mulled over a decision of any great consequence. Malak had scorned it as a sign of dim-wittedness. But Revan knew his friend had worked long and hard to overcome his species' innate impulsiveness, and this was just the form his self-control took. The Jedi would freely admit that Sebulga's mind was near as sharp as his own; it was one of the many reasons the Dug had stood at Revan's right hand for as long as he had.

The impasse was abruptly shattered by a second sigh, and Revan knew from the look in his friend's eyes that he'd won.

"I really need to stop listening to you."

"And if I had a credit for every time I've heard you say that," Revan finished, "I'd be rich as the Exchange."

"All right, you ass," Sebulga caved, "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt one more time. Just one thing."

"Name it."

"Let me finish up this race," the Dug said. "I'm not about to end my undefeated streak on a forfeit."

Revan gave his friend a disbelieving look at that, searching the Dug's lined face for any sign of sarcasm and finding none.

"You're serious."

"Of course," Sebulga said roughly. "Why the hell wouldn't I be?"

The Jedi gave his friend another beat before starting to entertain the possibility that he really didn't know what was going on.

"They're setting you up."

"I know, Revan," the Dug said shortly, impatiently slugging another shot. "I'm better than you at reading people, even if you'll never admit it."

"And you're going to race anyway."

Sebulga gave his friend a long look, and for a moment Revan felt like it was his sanity under scrutiny.

"I've killed beasts on Dxun three times bigger than those pods," the Dug answered defiantly. "Did you honestly think a blown engine was going to scare me? If anything, I should race just to punish those bastards for even thinking to undercut me. Can't expect gratitude from snakes, after all."

Revan smiled, and Sebulga's brow furrowed into a frown.

"Was that some kind of test?"

The Jedi laughed and shook his head.

"Not at all," Revan replied. "I'm just glad to see that some things never change. You want back-up when you collect your cut?"

"No," Sebulga said firmly, rising from his stool and reaching out towards the bartender. "Been far too long since I've had a good brawl; I want to enjoy this one."

Revan watched with a smile as the bartender's eyes went glassy and his jaw fell slack, the memories of their conversation obliterated from his mind. The Jedi was glad to see that his friend hadn't let his command of the Force wither.

"Thanks for picking up the tab," the Jedi said as they walked to the door, and the Dug laughed.

"You're right, Revan," he said with a rueful smile. "Some things never change."

* * *

Sebulga was silent the whole way over to the racetrack, mulling over the same thoughts in his head that had been nagging at him back at the bar. He wasn't about to go back on his decision to rejoin his old friend in battle, but he saw no harm in preparing for the worst in any event. If life had taught him one thing, it was that things could always get worse. It wasn't a matter of 'if', so much as 'when' and 'how'.

It was an expectation that the Mandalorians had always been keen to live up to.

And it was an expectation that reared up again as the Dug's eyes came to rest on the single-engine pod waiting in his pit. It wasn't that he was worried about actually getting hurt; he was sure he could avoid that. It just pissed him off that these slimy rodents were going to take his pod down in a pathetic attempt to dethrone him. He liked this pod; it had won him a fair chunk of money.

Sebulga contemplated seeking out the source of the sabotage and fixing it, but decided against it: the last thing he wanted to do was tip Tyron and his cronies off that he was onto their scheme. The more surprised they were when he survived their attempt on his life, the easier it would be for him to bowl them over. The Dug's mouth curved into a sharp smile as he imagined the feeling of his hands choking the life out of that treacherous Twi'lek, but he took a deep breath and calmed himself back down. No use getting caught up in the feeling of victory before it had been earned.

"Here we are," Revan said calmly, pulling Sebulga out of his thoughts. They were in front of the pit where the Dug's pod waited for him, its light-tan metal burnished and gleaming in the unrelenting sunlight. Sebulga approached the pod and gave it a once-over, purposefully not looking too closely. It didn't seem like there was anything wrong with it at all from a cursory inspection; clearly Tyron had gone out of his way to be subtle. The Dug assumed it was going to be some kind of remotely-triggered explosive, secreted within the turbine of the engine and out of sight: it would be just like Tyron to do his dirty work from a long way away.

"There you are, chief," the relieved voice of a dust-covered Ithorian floated over as Sebulga's head mechanic walked over to meet him. "I was worried you might not make it this time."

"You shouldn't have been," the Dug said tersely, before the uneasy look in his mechanic's eyes gave him pause. "What's wrong?"

The Ithorian glanced around for a moment before leaning nervously down towards his boss.

"We found a small detonator on the inside of the engine," he whispered. "We would have removed it, but it was wired to blow if tampered with. If you want, I can go tell the coordinator—"

"You don't have to tell him anything," Sebulga countered sharply. "I'm racing."

"Are you sure?"

"I've already had this conversation once today," the Dug growled as he moved back over toward his pod, "and I hate repeating myself. That guy over there is an old friend of mine—clear a place for him on the bench."

The Ithorian said nothing in the face of his boss's commanding words, clearly torn between his desire to keep his employer safe and the knowledge that nothing he could possibly say would sway Sebulga from his course. Dejected, he walked back to his place in the pit and cleared off a place for Revan to sit. The Jedi didn't take it, though, instead strolling up to his friend as he eased his way toward the starting line.

"You know I could take that bomb out without it blowing," he said, a smile on his face as he remembered just how stubborn his friend could be when he put his mind to it.

"So could I," Sebulga growled back over the roar of the engine. "What's your point? Besides, it just has to hold out for one lap. Even if Tyron triggers it halfway through the race, I'll be fine."

Revan knew that was the end of the conversation, so he just gave his friend a parting nod for good luck and returned to his place on the bench.

Sebulga stopped his pod, the thin cylinder hovering second from the starting line. He hadn't raced in the qualifiers—he hadn't really needed to—so his normal spot at the head of the pack was currently occupied by his would-be successor, Terro Gyo. The Dug looked disdainfully at the Phuii's single massive engine, the bulbous green and yellow turbine dwarfing his own. He hated that the sport was beginning to favor the larger engines—the speed that came with the increase in engine size now prized over a racer's display of agility and maneuverability on the track. He wouldn't be surprised if these young speed-devils upped the ante and started using two engines before long.

_Good thing this is my last race,_ he thought as his small feet flew over the controls in his pod, flipping switches and igniting his own torpedo-shaped engine proper. _Otherwise I'd get stuck upgrading just to keep up._

Sebulga reached up and pulled his racing goggles down over his eyes. He peered around at Mos Espas' still incomplete grand arena, the finished seats filled with cheering fans, the unfinished occupied by their Jawa architects, who were taking their break to watch the race. He settled down into his seat, closing his eyes and letting the Force flow through him—he could feel the din of the crowd, the bellowing of the announcer over the speaker, the squeals and chirps of pit droids, the cries of merchants trying to sell food, the low growling of his opponents' engines around him, the money changing hands in the cool dark rooms too expensive for anyone but the Hutts, the final countdown chirping three, two, one.

_Go._

His eyes flew open an instant before the starting flag fell, his long arms slamming the twin throttles forward, his engine lurching over the starting line and immediately into first place as he took the sharp left out of the arena. He risked a look over his shoulder, Gyo's massive turbine eclipsing everything in his backward line of sight. Sebulga growled and swerved to the right around a large boulder, forcing the Phuii to take the outside path as they approached the first canyon. Sebulga swerved back into the lead as the pack of pods funneled down into a straight line and entered the high-walled ravine. He heard an explosion from somewhere behind him, but he couldn't look back to see who it had been—one mistake in this narrow corridor meant certain death.

He burst back out into the open, his vision filled with towering mesas and deep, orange sand. He heard the bellowing of an engine to his right and saw that Gyo had taken up the space beside him. The Phuii swerved into Sebulga, the larger racer shoving the smaller toward the cliff-face to the left of the track. The Dug's pod almost scraped the wall, righting itself just as the competing engine swung back towards him for a repeat attack. Sebulga pulled back on his throttles, allowing Gyo to swing his racer into the first place spot and Daellyn, a female Gran in a wide blue speeder, to sneak in behind him and into second.

Sebulga held his breath as his pod followed theirs and the track dropped out from beneath them, the racers flying over Metta Drop and into the Ebe Cratered Valley. He shoved his throttles forward as his engine came over the lip of the cliff, his pod flying forward rapidly and above and past Daellyn's, his engine clearing hers but his cockpit clipping her intake fan, sending the front of her engine tipping forward and into the ground. His own racer swerved wildly, but was soon under control. Daellyn was not so lucky—he spun his neck around to watch as the Gran's engine shattered on the desert floor and her pod flew up into the air, her orange arms flailing wildly before another pod slammed into it, the two racers vanishing in a ball of fire.

Sebulga focused back on the track in front of him, quickly falling into line behind Gyo as they entered the darkness of Beggar's Canyon. He dropped his speed harshly as he went through the sharp curves, the Phuii in front adding more distance between them in the face of his opponent's caution. Another pair of racers flew past him without care. Sebulga didn't mind that he was sacrificing time now; he couldn't collect his winnings if he got himself killed before the race was over. As if his thoughts had been read, one of the two speeders in front of him clipped a rock outcropping and was sent spiraling into the canyon floor. Sebulga swerved to avoid the wreckage and shot back out into the light of the desert plain.

He was in third place by at least two seconds—he slammed his throttles forward, hitting maximum acceleration in the freedom of the sandy plain. He was quickly behind the pod in second, the fat orange engine pulling its six-armed pilot, Tosigano, ahead of him. The Xexto craned his long neck backwards and Sebulga saw his mouth twist down into a sneer. After a flurry of arms within the battered cockpit, the pod in front of him rocketed forward and around a set of boulders. Sebulga clenched his jaw and punched his throttles forward again, his thick knuckles touching the dash of his pod as he followed Tosigano around the boulders.

A flash of red exploded in Sebulga's mind, the Force speaking to him and warning him of danger. He abandoned his path behind the Xexto, choosing a slower sweeping route through the final stretch of the plains. He watched as the other racer took the inside turn and vanished suddenly, falling into a hidden pit in the sand. Sebulga swerved back onto the main track in time to watch the Xexto's cockpit disappear down the hungry beak of a young Sarlaac. He steeled his gaze forward at Gyo's distant pod racer, the squeals of the ravenous pit vanishing behind him.

He swerved and dodged through gnarled rocky arches as he began to close the distance between himself and the Phuii in first. He was close to Gyo now—close enough to hear the roaring engine of his competitor over his own—and he maintained his proximity as they entered a narrow and twisting canyon affectionately dubbed "The Whip". Sebulga knew that Gyo didn't have the room or the freedom to attempt to shake him in the narrow gully, and he was fairly certain that the Phuii didn't have the guts to try, either. They slipped through the canyon and into haunting darkness of Laguna Cave, Sebulga's only source of a guiding light coming from his enemy's engine ahead. The Dug grimaced and accelerated, hoping that the Phuii navigated the dark turns successfully. Otherwise they'd both be Bantha fodder in no time.

They were suddenly spat out of the cave and into the wide, sandy Canyon Dune Turn. Sebulga attempted to snap to the left, to take the inside of the curve, but Gyo cut him off. Sebulga growled and took to the outside, slamming his throttles down again as he attempted to come alongside his opponent once more. A streak of yellow appeared next to him as a rookie Sneevel pilot attempted to take on the Phuii in the lead. Sebulga slowed a bit and watched as the two pods clashed and rattled against each other and the wide turn began to narrow into the circuit's final canyon, his orange eyes flicking back and forth from the green engine to the yellow, his mouth curving into a grin as the Sneevel's racer spun out of control after too aggressive an attack, the Dug's own pod racer overtaking Gyo's as the Phuii was forced to carefully maneuver around the Sneevel's wreckage in the narrowing canyon. He was in first place again, just as they reached the bleached white expanse of the Hutt Flats.

This was the final leg of the race. He threw his arms into the dash once more, the throttles rattling in his hands as he forced his racer to top speed over the pale flats. He ducked around a massive Sand Crawler that was lumbering across the course, his eyes locating another pair of the Jawa transports on the track in the distance. He took in a breath and reached out for the Force, his power calming him and focusing his senses as he began to close in on the finish line for one final victory.

Then Tyron's trap detonated inside his engine and he began to swerve wildly. He'd been expecting it to happen now, when he finally strained his racer at top speed. He gripped his pod racer with the Force, stabilizing it just enough so that the failing engine didn't dive nose-first into the sand. He pushed himself up and out of his seat as his pod slowed and began to die, his long arms holding him above the chair. He closed his eyes and let out a sigh and leapt out of his cockpit and into the hot desert air, blindly falling as his pod swerved violently to the right and slammed into one of the Sand Crawlers.

He landed in Terro Gyo's cockpit just as the Phuii had prepared to overtake him. Sebulga looked down into the panicked eyes of his rival and gripped the Phuii's long, leathery neck with both of his small feet. The green racer struggled as the Dug lifted him out of his seat, but the Jedi threw a wave of Force energy into his chest and the Phuii was sent flailing into the desert floor. Sebulga dropped down into the foreign cockpit and took control of it, looking over his shoulder to watch Gyo tumble head over heel across the flats.

He laughed and sped forward, crossing the finish line four seconds above the racer behind him.

He slowed his rival's racer down and stopped, leaping up onto the pod's gunwale and standing on his tiny feet to lift his heavy hands into the air in victory, his helmet in one and the other waving freely to the roars of the crowd. Revan was leaning against the wall of his pit, a smirk on his face as he clapped his hands slowly.

Sebulga was still laughing as he waved and looked around him, bathing in the glory of his final victory.

The Dug blocked the roaring cheers of the crowd from his mind as he hopped down out of his borrowed pod, focused on one thing and one thing only. He could see Tyron and a few of his lackeys standing nervously in his pit, clearly trying to decide between seeming shocked at the explosion or scared that their plan had failed. Instead they just wound up looking like floundering idiots who were suddenly far out of their depths; cowards beyond pardon.

The soldier in Sebulga could never stand cowardice.

Revan was still leaning against the back wall of the pit, but his smirk had changed into a measured, questioning look. The Dug knew what it meant, and gave his head the barest of shakes. The Jedi nodded and relaxed his stance, keeping his eyes off of Tyron's crew as not to raise their suspicions. Sebulga shifted his eyes back to hold Tyron's gaze and kept them there, unwavering. As he came into earshot, the Twi'lek took a step forward to greet him with as much composure as he could muster.

"Are you all right, Sebulga?" he asked with simpering solicitousness, and it was all the Dug could do to keep from snapping his neck right there in view of the crowd. Instead he gave a hard nod, baring his teeth in a wide grin.

"Haven't felt this alive in a long time, partner," he said. "Good thing the pod I had to snag was being driven by a Phuii, or Gyo wouldn't have survived the spill."

"Er—yes," Tyron said, with a pale attempt at relief. "Yes. That one's always had quite the lucky streak."

Sebulga couldn't resist the chance to turn the screws some more, and put on his best worried expression.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You look slimier than usual."

"I'm fine," Tyron replied tersely, the slight jab steeling some of his nerves as it pricked his pride. "I suppose you'll be wanting your cut of the purse, yes?"

"Naturally."

But as the Twi'lek reached for the pouch nestled inside his vest, Sebulga held out a hand to stop him.

"Oh, there's no rush," he said smoothly, keeping one eye watching Tyron's goons and the other fixed on his prey. "Why don't we go down to the cantina for a few drinks first, to celebrate? After a win like that, I'm sure the crowd will want me back for more."

Just as the Dug had hoped, the relief on the goons' faces was palpable. There were plenty of narrow, dark alleyways between the track and the cantina, if one chose to take them: more than enough opportunity to finish the job by a slightly different method. Tyron's face was again conflicted, this time between the same relief his comrades were feeling and revulsion that his plan had backfired on him so heinously.

"That sounds more than befitting for the day's champion," Tyron agreed, confidence in his voice for the first time since the race had ended. The temerity of the Twi'lek was galling, but Sebulga kept his composure. He would only need to hold it for a few more minutes, anyway. "I assume you'll be wanting your friends to join us as well?"

Sebulga chuckled.

"What, and force them to listen to you talk?" he quipped harshly. "Some friend I'd be then. No, this is about business between you and me, partner."

Tyron nodded, failing to completely hide his look of premature triumph.

"Fair enough," he said. "Well then, shall we?"

"Lead on," the Dug said in a booming voice, inwardly pleased to see the alertness of Tyron's men already slacking. They thought the victory was already theirs and their vigilance suffered for it; the amateur mistake that had buried countless rookie soldiers during the Mandalorian Wars. It was almost enough to make Sebulga feel pity over their impending murders.

Almost.

He let Tyron take point, guiding his men predictably into the first network of alleys they came across. It wasn't long before the Dug found himself surrounded, three men in front of him and three behind as the Twi'lek led on. They approached a small clearing and Sebulga knew by the tense strides of his companions that the time had come to drop his pretenses at last. He strode confidently into the open space, not even flinching as he heard the familiar sounds of weapons being freed from their safeties behind him. The trio in front of him turned and did the same, completing the ambush. As Tyron stepped forward to gloat, Sebulga let his hand drift slowly down to rest by his lightsaber. He could feel it shaking in its holster, as eager for blood as its master.

"And just what good do you think that will do you, Sebulga?" the Twi'lek asked with a smug grin, eyeing the lightsaber at the Dug's waist with amusement. "Everyone knows you just lifted that thing from a dead Dark Jedi. And even if you had had some training with it, that wouldn't help you now. You're surrounded and outnumbered. Just give up and accept your death with what little dignity you have."

Sebulga's mouth split into a vicious smile at those words, his lightsaber springing into his hand and waiting there, dormant. Tyron capitalized on his enemy's hesitation and signaled with a shout, the thugs behind the Dug raising their rifles and opening fire.

The lightsaber in Sebulga's hand ignited with a snap and _hiss_, the red blade casting a terrible glow onto his narrowed eyes. He shifted his blade behind him to block the bolts with seamless ease, pushing off on his short legs and rocketing towards the hapless trio. One of them was quick enough to get another shot off, and the man standing next to him paid the price for it as the blaster bolt bounced off the lightsaber and slammed into his face, killing him before he hit the ground. Sebulga completed the motion and brought his saber around in an arc, slashing diagonally down and splitting the second man from his left shoulder to the middle of his right rib.

The third man turned and tried to run, earning himself a lightsaber through the sternum for his cowardice. The three remaining thugs decided to attack in unison, letting loose a volley of blaster bolts at Sebulga's back. But the red blade appeared again to block them, held up this time by a foot instead of a hand. The Dug pushed off into an arcing backflip, the Force strengthening his small legs. He shifted his lightsaber to his other foot in midair, taking aim before slinging it downwards with deadly precision. The whirling blade sliced through all three men in one pitiless curve, steered unerringly by the Force. Its job done, the lightsaber returned swiftly to its master just as Sebulga touched the ground again, flying into his hand and stopping cold. The Dug slipped it back into its holster and sighed, glorying in the feeling of his heart pounding in his chest. It had been too long since he'd felt the sensation of flesh cleaving in two beneath his lightsaber—so long he'd forgotten just how much he missed it.

Revan had been right, Sebulga knew: he'd been hiding for far too long, and it was time to end his seclusion. There was a war coming, and the front line was where he both wanted and needed to be. He was a soldier, and would die as one—even if it meant dying before his time. His blood was up again, and it wasn't going back down. Not this time. He could almost smell the damp rot of the jungles on Dxun, hear the crackle and sizzle of high-powered blaster-rifle rounds tearing through plate metal like silk. The sensations faded as his adrenaline left him, but the memories of the Mandalorian Wars lingered in his mind, closer now than they had been for years.

A pathetic whimper broke Sebulga out of his recollection. He looked over to see Tyron crouched against a dried mud wall a few paces away, his arms shielding his face in a vain attempt to ward off his demise. Smiling again, the Dug made his way over towards his former business partner with slow, deliberate strides.

"You know," he said lightly, "those words you used earlier—they reminded me of something someone once told me. A Mandalorian general, in fact. A general who thought, like you, that just because he had more men than me, I would give up and die without a fight. Do you want to know what happened to him?"

"No!" Tyron shrieked, scuttling backwards like a crab as Sebulga advanced on him. "Stay back! Stay away!"

The Dug snorted contemptuously, bounding forward to within striking range and severing both of the Twi'lek's legs from his torso.

"And you said _I_ was the one with no dignity," Sebulga spat disdainfully over Tyron's howls of pain. "Shut up and stop embarrassing yourself."

The Twi'lek fell silent, but it was only a matter of moments before a single, soft word escaped his lips.

"Mercy…" he whispered, slowly reaching under his vest to remove the full purse of winnings and throwing it at the Dug.

Sebulga stopped at the entreaty long enough to scoop up the large sum of credits, and for a moment Tyron dared to hope that his word had swayed the warrior. But the hope was shattered when Sebulga barked out a sharp laugh, an eerie light gleaming in his eyes again.

"Funny," he said. "That's the same thing the Mandalorian asked for. And I gave it to him."

Tyron's eyes widened in surprise, unsure whether to believe what he was hearing.

"Really?"

"Absolutely," Sebulga answered evenly, moving forward once more, slowly this time. "It was how I got my nickname, actually. Do you know what it is?"

Tyron opened his mouth to speak, but the words never left his throat. In the blink of an eye, Sebulga had leapt forward and wrapped his heavy hands around Tyron's throat, constricting it shut. As the grip tightened even further, the Dug leaned his head down and whispered into the Twi'lek's ear.

"The 'Strangler'."

He felt every muscle in Tyron's body tense as it readied itself for the end, fear ruling over him in his last moments as Sebulga always knew it would. The Twi'lek was a coward born, and there was no greater shame for a coward than to live with the knowledge of what he truly was. The Dug loosened his grip and pushed off of his prey, expelling a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding as Tyron began to weep uncontrollably behind him.

Sebulga felt as though a mask he had put on long ago was finally falling away, and he had never been gladder for it. He strode surely and swiftly back through the long alley to the racing pit, where Revan greeted him with a smile.

"Looks like you handled yourself just fine," the Jedi called over to him, and Sebulga laughed. Revan could tell in an instant that the change he had been waiting for had finally happened, and his smile widened.

"Welcome back, commander."

Sebulga returned the gesture, a light in his eyes that Revan knew was mirrored in his own.

"Glad to be here, General," the Dug finished, completing their old wartime call-and-response with a genuine grin. "Now, let's go see how that old teacher of mine is doing."

* * *

…

…

**A/N:** Holy crap, it's alive! I'm so very, very sorry that this update took as long as it did; a combination of a lack of motivation and a crush of school-work kept me away from it. But the steady prodding of **JasoTheArtisan** brought me back to this story, and I couldn't be happier for it. **Jaso** is also the architect of the truly awesome podracing scene in this chapter, and for that I thank him again. He is Mega Ultra Beta.

**Reviews** are, as always, highly appreciated; thanks to **Wos**, **ApparentlyInsane**, **hhiihhii8**, **Gwynedde** and the ever-dependable **Grinja** for their reviews last chapter. You all rock.

And I promise, for really real this time, that I'll try to increase my update schedule from here on out. We're getting to the start of the really good stuff at long last, and I'm not going to fall off the horse again.

Thanks for reading, I hope the increased length of the chapter made it worth the wait, and I'll see you all next time!

_Jazz_


	12. Wraiths

**Legacies**

**Chapter 12: **Wraiths

* * *

Sebulga let out a low whistle when he saw the exterior of the _Ebon Hawk_, a gesture of appreciation that was only intensified when he got an eyeful of the interior.

"This is still a damn fine ship," he said. "Looks a bit more scuffed up than the last time I saw her, but she's aged well."

Revan gave his friend a curious look. "You've seen the _Hawk_ before?"

"Of course, last time you came 'round Anchorhead," the Dug answered. "Hard to miss a ship this nice landing in a dust-bowl like that. I even thought about saying something to you, but I didn't. Not the time."

"No," the Jedi agreed, "it wasn't. I didn't even remember who I was back then, and I don't think Bastila would have taken too kindly to someone blowing her cover."

"Exactly," Sebulga agreed. "And seeing your HK again made me nervous. Never get into a fight you can't win, after all."

Revan smiled.

"That doesn't sound like something you'd have said in the old days."

The Dug gave a dismissive shrug, ambling towards the large table in the main room of the ship and hopping up onto a chair.

"I was younger then," he said flatly. "We all were."

"True," Revan allowed, pausing for a moment before reaching into one of the pockets of his robe and pulling out two decks of pazaak cards. "Speaking of fights you can't win," he said, "you up for a game or two, to pass the time?"

"I hope you were talking about yourself, Revan," Sebulga said with a laugh. "You still owe me money from the last time I stomped all over you on Korriban. And keep whatever shit back-up deck you were about to offer me," he finished, producing a deck of his own. "I never go anywhere without these."

"Suit yourself," Revan said with a small sigh. "Just thought I'd be generous."

"'Never trust another man's generosity when money is involved,'" Sebulga quipped, a smirk on his face. "I think that was about the only insightful thing your boy Malak ever said."

"And he stole it from me," Revan countered with a smile. "Or didn't he tell you that part?"

"Must've slipped his mind," the Dug mused, shuffling his deck dexterously with one of his feet while Revan cleared out eighteen spaces for the playing field. The players each drew four hand cards and the game began.

"So," Sebulga opened as he drew a six from the neutral deck, "how many of them are still alive, after you cleaned out Korriban?"

Revan drew a nine and put it down in front of him, glancing down at his hand cards and frowning.

"Ten, to the best of my knowledge," he said, "but I wouldn't be surprised if they've added to the ranks since then. I don't know where they are or what they're up to, though. Jerissk hasn't started talking yet."

"Jerissk?" Sebulga repeated in surprise, drawing a five and growling. "The next one's going to be a ten," he grumbled, "I can feel it. Are you talking about the same Jerissk that killed the Seer after the coup?" he asked, his tone back to normal. When Revan nodded, the Dug shook his head. "Figures. How'd you manage that?"

"Ran into him on Kashyyyk not too long ago," Revan explained, drawing a one and smiling. "We were looking for someone else, and found him instead. He offered to trade what he knows for amnesty, but he's been pretty quiet since then."

"I'm not surprised at all," Sebulga said, drawing a nine and breaking out into a grin. "I'd be tight-lipped too, if it was the only thing keeping me from a mind-wipe."

Revan didn't answer the jab, drawing from the neutral deck in silence. When the card was revealed to be a ten, the Dug cursed loudly.

"You bastard," he hissed. "Of course you'd draw that."

"Of course you'd get angry over a tie that cost you nothing," Revan countered. "Shuffle those back in and let's keep going."

Sebulga did so, and this time it was Revan's turn to draw first. His hand moved to do so, but stopped just over the deck.

"How did it happen?" he asked, and Sebulga narrowed his eyes at the cryptic question.

"How did what happen?" he pressed. "You're going to have to be more specific than that."

"The Wraiths," Revan clarified as he drew a three. "How did they fall apart?"

"Ah," Sebulga said with a bitter click of his teeth as he drew a five, "that. Are you really going to make me answer that question?"

Revan drew another three and gave his friend a level stare, remaining silent for a few beats before speaking again.

"So you were right about him, then?"

Sebulga drew a ten and played a plus-five from his hand, coming to an even twenty. When he looked back up at Revan, his eyes held both anger and melancholy.

"Of course I was right about him," the Dug answered sharply. "And I told you so more than once."

"I know."

"But you kept him around anyway."

"We needed him," Revan said as he drew an eight and played a plus-six, tying the set again. Sebulga barked out a mirthless laugh at that, the melancholy vanishing from his eyes entirely.

"No," he said firmly. "Don't even try to justify it. We had plenty of good hackers to choose from; there was no excuse for picking Voroun and you know it."

"I made the best decision I could with what I had at my disposal," Revan said sternly. "Voroun was the most efficient hacker in our entire army, and I needed someone who could keep everything I wanted secret away from prying eyes."

Sebulga's frown deepened, his grip tightening involuntarily around the three cards in his hand.

"Even though that made him the one person who controlled all of those secrets," the Dug said darkly. "He'd sold us out before your command carrier ever got blindsided by Malak. How else do you think your shields got completely deactivated right before the attack?"

Revan had no retort for that, bowing his head and sighing under the weight of such a blunt truth.

"That wasn't supposed to have happened," he said heavily. "But what's done is done. You were right, I was blind and I got all I deserved and more for ignoring you. I'm sorry."

Sebulga gathered the neutral cards back together and shuffled the deck again, drawing a ten with a sigh. Even though he'd expected to feel better after finally getting that weight off his chest, it had left nothing but more emptiness in its wake.

"I'm not here to guilt-trip you, Revan," he said calmly, the bitterness gone from his voice as his friend slowly drew a seven. "Looks like you've done plenty of that yourself already, and I came on too strong just now. We all screwed up, and Malak just waited for the right moment to take advantage of that."

"Now who's making excuses?" Revan asked with a distant smirk, which grew as Sebulga drew another ten. "I never said I was perfect, Sebulga. If it's any consolation, though, Voroun wasn't on Korriban when I cleared out the Academy."

The Dug's face was suffused with surprise as Revan drew a nine, which quickly turned into anticipation.

"So he's one of the ten, then," he said with a grim smile. "Why didn't you just tell me that first thing, and save us both a bunch of time?"

"I needed to make sure you weren't going to be in it just for revenge," Revan answered. "Now that I know, there's no need to hide anything else. I have a question for you, though," he said as he drew a ten and played a plus-three, ending the set in another tie.

"Yeah?"

"How did the Seer die?"

Sebulga paused, sighing at the sadness the memory had dredged up within him.

"After you were taken out," he began, "Malak's first act in power was to hunt down and exterminate the Wraiths. Only the Shade, the Seer and I survived the purge. But you were like a father to that kid; he just couldn't let your death go."

Revan felt a wave of remorse surge up at another consequence of his failure, but he crushed it and kept his composure.

"What happened?" he asked evenly. "What did he do?"

"He tried to attack Malak head-on by himself is what happened," the Dug answered sharply. "Only he never made it that far. The Blademaster cut him off and dueled him instead."

Sebulga watched in disbelief as a smile began to creep over Revan's face at those words, light chasing out the sadness from his eyes.

"So it was Jerissk who struck him down, then? You're sure?"

"Absolutely," the Dug insisted. "He even brought Malak proof of death enough to satisfy him."

"Did Jerissk ever mention the Seer again, after he killed him?" The Jedi pressed, almost excitedly.

"Of course not," the Dug said, confused, as he watched Revan shuffle the neutral deck. His friend's behavior was starting to worry him. "Why would he have? No point in talking about corpses."

Revan broke out into a sincere laugh at that, the smile now firmly on his face as he revealed the reason for his happiness.

"Because he never killed him, that's why."

The cards stopped in mid-shuffle, split into two piles as the Dug's hands froze.

"What?" he said in shock. "How do you know that?"

Revan leaned back in his chair, his blue eyes keen as he looked across the table at his old friend.

"You weren't there," he said, "but I decided to march with the ranks during the final big push on Sluis Van."

"You did _what_?" Sebulga exclaimed, his eyes wide. "Were you trying to get yourself killed? If I'd known you were pulling another one of those stupid undercover stunts—"

"You would have tried to talk me down, and wouldn't have taken no for an answer," Revan cut his friend off. "Why do you think I sent you and Zala to Ossus?"

The Dug gave a reluctant smile, admiring his commander's cleverness even as it frustrated him.

"Bastard," he grumbled, gesturing for Revan to draw as he set the deck back down. "So? What happened?"

Revan drew a one and sighed, tapping the table in irritation.

"Jerissk and the Seer took a company in the spearhead rush on a tough defensive position," the Jedi explained, "so I tagged along to make sure they didn't do anything too reckless—each of them alive was worth more than Sluis Van's shipyards, after all."

"Right," Sebulga agreed, drawing an eight. "Why did you even do those charades in the first place? Seems like a stupid idea to me."

Revan shrugged.

"You weren't the only one to think that, out of those who knew or heard the rumors that I'd occasionally act as an infantryman," the Jedi said. "But there's no better way to assess the strength of a military unit than to see how they perform when they think their commander isn't watching—and after I let word get out that Revan himself was haunting the ranks in disguise, I hardly ever had to worry about discipline again."

The Dug gave a deep chuckle, shaking his head as he did so.

"I see where you're coming from with that," he allowed, "but I still think it's crazy. So, what happened to Jerrisk and the Seer?"

"They wound up in a pitched battle against a corps of Jedi Knights, headed by Master Irian," Revan continued. "I hung back, waiting to see how it would develop before deciding whether or not to interfere." He paused long enough to draw a seven. "They took down most of the Knights, at the cost of the four soldiers they had backing them up. In the end it was the two of them against Irian and a Knight, and Jerissk took care of the Knight."

Sebulga drew another eight and played the plus-four side of a mixed card, ending his part of the set.

"And then the Seer took down Irian, right?" he finished. "I remember hearing about that much, at least."

"Yes, he did," Revan said as he drew a ten and played a plus-two, tying the set yet again. "But not before he saved Jerissk's life. Irian had moved in to stab the Blademaster in the back, and the Seer barely blocked the strike."

"That's strange," the Dug said deliberately as he shuffled the neutral deck. "I don't buy for a second that a Jedi as old as Irian was could have struck hard enough to throw the Seer off-balance, or fast enough to catch Jerissk off-guard."

Revan nodded, the intentness of his look intensifying.

"I thought so, too," he said, "so I started looking for something that felt off, something that might have been tampering with the Force. And when I found the source of the disturbance, I left those two in their own power and went after it."

"Let me guess," Sebulga interjected again, his tone dry. "That was the first time you set your eyes on the lovely Bastila Shan and her godforsaken Battle Meditation."

Revan nodded again, his lips curling into a satisfied smile.

"She had no idea who I was," the Jedi said, his voice wistful. "I'd taken my mask off, and the slight alterations I made to my appearance with the Force removed all traces of the Dark Side's influence from my body. It was unfortunate that I had to kill seven Jedi to get to her, though; if she hadn't seen that, it might have been possible to sway her to the Dark Side back then."

"That's charming, really," the Dug quipped, "but what the hell does it have to do with Jerissk and the Seer?"

"As soon as I broke Bastila's Battle Meditation, those two finished off Irian with ease. Jerissk never forgot the debt he owed to the Seer, though; his pride made sure of that."

Sebulga's orange eyes brightened with the glow of understanding, and he smiled.

"So you think Jerissk didn't kill the Seer, and let him go to settle up their debt?"

"I do," Revan answered with a nod. "And we'll know the truth from Jerrisk in a few hours, once we're back on Dantooine."

"And you really think he'll tell you something that sensitive?"

Revan said nothing in answer, choosing to pose a question instead.

"What did Jerissk bring back as the proof of death?"

Sebulga furrowed his brow, diving back into his memories.

"Just the Seer's tattered blindfold," the Dug answered, his voice becoming softer with each word as it trailed off in the wake of understanding. "He said that was all he could… recover…" Sebulga's voice rose again sharply as the final pieces of an old mystery fell into place. "That son of a _bitch_!"

Revan could no longer contain his smile to just that, and a few moments later the friends' laughter rang through the hull of the _Ebon Hawk._

* * *

Selvi had been meditating in the room she shared with Arina, trying to catch some trace whisper of the malicious Force energy she'd felt earlier, when a powerful jolt snapped her clean out of the trance and back, gasping, into the present. There was no missing a spike of killing intent that strong, especially not when the signature accompanying it was so painfully familiar. The Miraluka had assumed that her friend hadn't been entirely straight with her earlier when she'd said she was going to go 'train'. But for Arina to smile and say that everything was all right, and then turn around and unleash so much hatred and anger? That was a lie that cut deep. Not only did Selvi have precious few friends left, but now it seemed like the one she loved the most didn't trust her.

Rising numbly to her feet, the Miraluka held her face in her hands for a moment, took a deep breath and sighed it all out in one slow, measured exhalation.

It was times like this that she envied those who could cry.

Selvi walked to the door, opened it and half-shuffled into the hall, her feet feeling like lead. The shock of Dark Side energy she'd just felt coming from Arina had stabbed clean through whatever lingering optimism she'd held onto following the Sith devastation of Dantooine. Selvi let her feet take her ploddingly where they would, too drained to bother imposing control over them. She vaguely felt Arina's force signature escape from her range of sensing in a frightening burst of speed, but the Miraluka didn't give a second's thought to pursuing. She was surprised to see that no one else seemed to be reacting to the proximity of such an obviously Dark Side haze, though—could they just not feel it, or were the energies of the Dark Side confusing and misdirecting those around them in order to stay hidden, as was their way?

And if the Dark Side was really keeping Arina hidden from all but those who were trying to find her, was there anyone else who might have been looking?

Selvi stopped in her tracks at the obviousness of the answer as it came to her, turning and beginning to walk back the other way down the hallway. The desire for hope renewed was enough to put life back into her steps, and the Miraluka was walking at her normal clip by the time she turned the corner and almost collided with the person she'd been looking for.

"My apologies, Master Shan," Selvi said quietly as she took a step backward. "I was just—"

"On your way to see me, I know," Bastila finished calmly. "Shall we go somewhere a little more private?"

Selvi nodded mutely and followed in Bastila's wake as the older Jedi led on in silence; the Miraluka could see by the swirling patterns of the Force around her that Arina's teacher was just as disturbed as she was— Bastila merely did a better job of hiding it. It wasn't long before they had reached a secluded courtyard, one dotted with growing saplings that had been planted in the new soil to both commemorate the rebuilding of the Enclave and to remember those who had died during Malak's bombardment. Selvi knew this place well.

Bastila took a seat on a nearby bench and the Miraluka joined her, silence settling in between them until Selvi could keep hers no longer.

"I don't want to lose her."

"I don't either."

Selvi turned to face Bastila, her expression serious.

"There's something corrupting her," she said. Bastila sighed.

"A confused sense of justice and a broken heart would test anyone's limits," the Knight said, "even the most experienced Jedi. She just needs time to put things into perspective."

"No, Master," Selvi pressed, "I mean something is actually corrupting her. An outside influence, acting through the Force."

Bastila straightened up at that, a worried look coming into her eyes as she considered the Miraluka's words.

"Are you sure about that?" she asked, clearly hoping it was only a theory. "I didn't feel anything influencing her, the last time we spoke."

"You wouldn't have," Selvi replied resolutely. Bastila gave her a look as her pride flared slightly, and the padawan scrambled to cover her gaffe.

"I meant that it was just this morning when I felt something off," she clarified, "right before that— other disturbance."

Bastila was quiet at that, her mind racing to make sense of the worrying dilemma. Something that could reach Arina and remain completely hidden would have to be quite powerful in the Dark Side; it was only thanks to her padawan's lack of control that she'd even sensed anything was amiss earlier.

"Do you have any idea what might be influencing her?" she asked, but the Miraluka could only shake her head.

"All I could feel were a few trace whispers of the Force around where she'd been given a vision," Selvi said, her voice laced with regret. "Nothing solid enough to connect to. I just know that it felt incredibly tainted. That's all."

Bastila sighed again, feeling weight pressing down over her shoulders. All of the fears Revan had been able to ward off so easily were creeping back, and it seemed that the reassurances keeping them at bay were growing weaker by the minute.

"I'll talk to Arina as soon as she comes back," she said at last, already feeling the vague pull of her padawan's presence at the edge of her senses. "I'm sure she'll—"

"No," Selvi cut her off, her voice unexpectedly hard. "She lied to me; to my face. And if she can lie to me, she can lie to you. She won't say anything unless she wants to, Master."

Bastila could hear the undercurrent of hurt running through the Miraluka's voice, and a sudden melancholy pierced her. It felt like just yesterday that they'd won a hard-fought piece from Malak; now everything was sliding back into chaos again, and it felt completely out of her control.

"I miss my brother so much," Selvi said lowly, her façade cracking to allow her sadness to flow to the surface. "He'd know what to do."

"Yes," Bastila said quietly, "he would."

The two women sat once more in silence, which was only broken by the strong pull of Arina's presence reemerging in force. Selvi turned to face her elder, all the hard lines that had cut across her face earlier now softened under the weight of frustration and desperation.

"Does every Jedi have to fall at least once, on the way to understanding?" she asked earnestly. "Isn't there some way to find peace without trudging through the Dark Side first?"

Bastila rose slowly and looked down at Selvi, giving the padawan a sad smile.

"I know this isn't what you want to hear," she said, "but that's a question that doesn't have an easy answer. In a perfect world, reading the texts left behind by the Jedi of old would be enough to know what the 'right' thing to do is. But this world isn't perfect; it's only as good as we can struggle to make it."

"So she's doomed, then?" the Miraluka pressed gloomily, and Bastila shook her head.

"Far from it," she answered. "I only meant that people like Arina—and myself, for that matter—have to overcome the darkness within ourselves, on our own terms, before understanding will truly be open to us. As long as I can be of help to Arina, I will; I promise you that."

Selvi smiled at last, nodding her head slowly in acceptance.

"I wouldn't ask you for anything more than that, Master," she said. "Thank you."

Bastila was a few steps away when she stopped and turned her head back over her shoulder.

"And if I can't reach her, in the end," she said, "I know you will."

Selvi straightened herself and gave a solemn nod. Bastila returned the gesture before walking off, leaving the Miraluka alone in her thoughts. Silvas had told her more than once that having faith in an outcome was the most important step on the way to achieving it—she just hoped that he'd been right, and that Arina wasn't too far-gone already.

* * *

Arina decided to sleep away her frustration, hoping that it might mean another chance to speak with Rhion.

She wasn't disappointed.

"I was so close to fighting him," the padawan seethed as she sat on the old bed next to the Echani; the same bed she'd slept in what felt like a lifetime ago on Nar Shaddaa. "I could see him, and I know he had to feel me standing there. He's still crippled—I could have killed him, if that old Jedi hadn't gotten in the way."

"Don't let it get to you," Rhion said gently, running one of his hands through her hair. The sensation was so comforting it hurt. "You should always know what your limits are, Arina. Rushing into a battle you can't win is foolish. Trust the Force, and wait for the right moment to reveal itself. Strike then, and you'll have your victory."

"You sound like Bastila," the padawan shot back, her voice simmering with anger at her own inadequacy. "I don't want to wait any longer than I already have; why can't anyone get that? If I was powerful enough, I could just force my way past Jolee, challenge Jerissk to a duel and kill him! You say you're still my teacher, Rhion, so teach me. How can I become that powerful?"

The Echani looked over at his former pupil and smiled. There was something in the gesture, in his eyes that sent a shiver down Arina's spine, but she ignored it.

"It would take many years of continual, dedicated studying," Rhion answered at last, "under the Jedi, at least. There is a way to achieve that power faster, but the method is not one a Jedi would teach you."

Arina was quiet for all of three seconds.

"I'm listening," she said, her green eyes stern and unblinking. Rhion leaned back, letting his eyes wander up to the ceiling as he spoke.

"There are many places in the galaxy that are naturally strong in the Force," the Echani began. "Several of these places are simply nexuses of energy; they have no alignment to a particular side of the Force. Others, however, have been molded by outside influences to embody a particular side of the Force.

"And of the places that the Sith have turned into natural monuments to the power of the Dark Side of the Force," Rhion finished, looking over at Arina once more, "none are more powerful, or more feared, than the fourth moon of Yavin. If you want power, you'll find it there."

Arina felt her throat go dry, but swallowed past her hesitation. If it would take following the path of the Dark Side to get what she wanted, then so be it. She knew she would be able to control the power it stood to give her, rather than letting herself get warped by it.

"And once I got there," she asked, "where would I go? Yavin IV is a jungle moon; where would the Sith have hidden their secrets?"

Rhion smiled again, but this time Arina felt no chill.

"What, did the Jedi not tell you its history?" he asked, earning only a shake of the head in return. "Why am I not surprised," the Echani replied. "Yavin IV is the site of Exar Kun's Sith temple, Arina," Rhion continued. "The Dark Side is alive within its halls, and within the holocrons the Sith hid there in secret before the Jedi bombed the surface of the moon."

Arina nodded resolutely, understanding now where she had to go—and what she had to do. The only question now was how to go about leaving Dantooine undetected, but that was a problem she was too tired to think about solving at the moment.

Rhion winced and closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and Arina knew that meant their time was almost up once again. Leaning forward, she kissed him with equal measures of gratitude and longing before she stood up and sighed, relaxing as she let the vision dissolve around her.

The Echani saw the room begin to waver and fade, giving his former pupil one last look in parting before he let his concentration snap completely.

The smell of the old stone and rot that filled his nostrils a moment later was just as jarring as always.

"Keep doing that this often," a level, slightly edged voice spoke up from the Echani's left, "and it'll kill you."

"Keep your concern to yourself," Rhion snapped at the other person in the chamber with him, his yellow eyes narrowed in anger. "Why didn't you sustain me? I was almost finished!"

"No," the Miraluka corrected him, his eyebrows furrowing, "you _were_ finished. The girl is going to find her way here; that much was obvious. What else would you have done?"

"Told her the coordinates for how to get here, you idiot," Rhion answered sharply. "Do you think the Masters on Dantooine won't notice someone they're already keeping an eye on looking up the coordinates for a place this strong in the Dark Side?"

"I wasn't about to risk myself for something that trivial," the Miraluka replied evenly. "Just think of it as another test, then. If she makes it here in one piece, she passes. If she fails, she wasn't worth the trouble to begin with."

Rhion snarled, rising out of his chair and glaring at the Miraluka as he stalked over to the meditation room's sole exit door.

"Follow my orders next time, Silvas," the Echani said in parting, "or I'll feed you to Nihilus."

The Miraluka waited for a few moments after Rhion had left before letting out his breath in a long sigh, wondering how he'd been led to this place. He'd gone from being one of Lord Revan's most trusted soldiers to taking orders from a miserable little piece of shit like Rhion, losing almost everything he held dear in the process.

And the dream had begun to plague his nights again; the dream Silvas thought he'd left behind when he joined Revan all those years ago. The dream of the future.

The dream of a world laid barren, stripped of all life.

Why had it returned to him now, of all times, after leaving him in peace for so long?

Silvas shoved the troubling thoughts out of his mind and sighed again, kneeling down in the middle of the room and beginning to meditate. For now, he had a much more pressing question to answer than the one posed by his ominous nightmare:

What was he going to do if the Jedi decided to come after their misguided padawan, forcing his hand before he was ready? How would he get out of that bind alive?

"What would you suggest, General?" Silvas asked to the empty room, before laughing bitterly and shaking his head.

Speaking to the dead was pointless, after all.

* * *

**...**

**...**

**A/N:** Holy shit, he actually updated! Yes, after a hiatus of more than a year (mortifying, I know; I have no excuse), the next chapter of Legacies is posted! I don't expect that many of you who were reading this a year ago have stuck around... but to those who have, you have my deepest gratitude. I can't promise that updates will resume at a regular pace, since my life is pretty crazy right now, but I can at least say that we're finally moving into the final arc of the story, more or less... and when there's a more exciting plot to write, the desire to write is never far behind. At the very least, I can say it won't take me another year.

It feels great to dive back into this story again after so long, though, and I'm looking forward to what's to come. Any **reviews** you might leave would be greatly appreciated, even if they're just telling me I suck for taking so long to update this story. Those would be wholly deserved, let's be honest.

Thanks must also be given, as per usual, to beta extraordinaire **JasoTheArtisan**, who did yet another phenomenal editing job here. He is a wizard, that guy. 

Thank you all for reading, and I'll see you next time!

**- Jazz  
**


End file.
